Initially, I dreamed about setting up my own shop remotely. It would be nice to have a place to go to do some writing out of the house without having to share the space with diners, coffee drinkers or teenagers playing online games (this is the setting of most places with wi-fi in my area).

I checked out a few online listings for office space and found a promising lead. A local real estate office was renting out one of their unused offices for only $400 a month, including utilities. I talked with the manager of the firm and rode by to check out the office. It was nice, but something told me not to sign right away.

While I came away with a favorable impression of the space, I added up the annual costs on the way home and realized it would cost me nearly $5,000 a year to fund this extra space. There had to be a more frugal alternative. I returned home to do a little brainstorming.

Setting Up a Home Office: The Before Picture

Yes, that’s our master bedroom closet. Well, half of it. And yes, this is the place where we just threw everything we didn’t have room for elsewhere. The fun part about moving is that you get to discover just how much crap you’ve accumulated over the years. I told my wife I was going to use my half of the closet to create a writing area. Once I convinced her that her side would be unaffected, she went along with the idea.

My first order of business was going through some old clothes I had accumulated over the years and no longer wore. I wound up bagging three bags full of old shirts, sweatshirts and miscellaneous t-shirts simply taking up space. I donated them to a local men’s shelter in our area, and they seemed grateful.

With the clothing racks cleared on one side, I moved that file cabinet into one corner of the office, and relocated an old table sewing machine my grandmother used (bottom right of that picture) to another room. I cleared out the remaining stuff (including the giant Christmas gift bag, which I embarrassed to confess still held most of the contents of our family’s Christmas stockings!).

The Frugal Home Office: After Picture

After sliding the file cabinet into the corner, I had plenty of room for a four-foot folding table. This was the ideal size, and since I already had one on hand, I made it work. The only other supplies needed, in addition to my writing laptop, was a simple scratch pad and pen, and a small basket with basic office supplies (stapler, dry erase markers, etc.).

As you can see, not much decorating going there. I did hang a dry erase/bulletin board and my kids were nice enough to supply a few early Valentine’s Day decorations. That sticker on the side of my filing cabinet has been there for several years and reads, “Live Like No One Else.” You might recognize that quote from Dave Ramsey. For years I looked at that sticker while toiling away on my side hustles with the goal of debt freedom in mind.

The books on top of the file cabinet represent just a small section from my budding personal finance library. You might recognize a few covers as Your Money or Your Life, Work Less, Live More, The Tightwad Gazette, America’s Cheapest Family, and the recent release from Gary Vaynerchuck, Crush It. The supply rotates as I discover new reads, but these four or five books stay because I always go back to them for ideas and inspiration.

In case you are worried about me becoming claustrophobic, I should tell you that since taking the picture I used a bungee cord to band those clothes on the right side and pull them closer to the wall. They were mostly warm-weather shirts, so I won’t be needing them for a while anyway. This freed up a lot of shoulder room, but honestly it felt pretty cozy without the extra space.

I couldn’t be happier working away in my frugal home office. I’m fairly isolated from other noises in the house, even with the door open (I can always close off the bedroom door and leave this one open if the kids get too noisy). I don’t expect everyone to be able to set up shop in their closet, but if you are looking for a place to start a home business, I encourage you to get creative before rushing out and leasing office space.

Chances are there is some tiny bit of unused space in your home to set up a folding table and computer. If nothing else, it was a good excuse to clean out our closet!

Today, I want to share with you four ways that being organized helps you live frugally as well:

1. Prevent Double Purchases

Let’s face it, when things are unorganized and cluttered, it’s easy to either forget you have something or simply not be able to find it when you need it, resulting in double – or triple or quadruple – purchases of the same item.

I’ve talked before about how an organized pantry prevents this from happening, but the truth is that it’s applicable to virtually every area of our lives, from home improvement projects and school supplies to seasonal gear and toiletries. A lot of people live frugally by stockpiling necessities such as children’s clothing, household products and gifts when there’s a great deal to be had, but if you can’t find things in your stockpile, then you’re actually wasting money and time in the process.

2. Organized Spaces Are Addictive

Although organizing is an ongoing task that you have to approach regularly rather than as a one-time event, having an organized space can actually motivate you to be frugal. Once you organize an area of your home, you’re more likely to think twice before making a purchase as you consider whether you have space for that item and how it will fit into your current system.

Of course, there will be times when you need or want to make a purchase that simply won’t fit with your system, and in those cases you’ll need to reorganize to make space for it. Hopefully the thought of redoing your hard work will make you consider whether it’s truly worth it. Thinking about purchases this way clearly quantifies the money and time that we invest in every purchase we make.

3. See the Results of Impulse Purchases

The first step to getting organized is to declutter and get rid of those items that are simply taking up space without enhancing your life. You will be able to clearly see the result of many of your impulse purchases as you realize that the kitchen gadget or tool or organizing item that you just had to have has been rarely used and often forgotten. This process helps inoculate you against future impulse purchases as you calculate the amount of money you’ve wasted on such purchases.

4. Break the Ties to Stuff

Finally, decluttering is also a valuable exercise in letting go of stuff (and yes, I emphasize the word stuff because I think I think it’s important to realize that a lot of the things in our home are simply that – stuff that wastes time, space and energy because we place more value on it than we should).

Obviously there is value in keeping sentimental items that take you back in time to a memory or a connection with a loved one. However, it’s important to differentiate between the items that truly accomplish this – such as a worn photo of your great grandparents, a toy that your mother played with as a child or the outfit your brought your firstborn child home from the hospital in – and items that you’re simply holding onto in an effort to create those memories – such as a cheap trinket from vacation or all 25 onesies that your firstborn wore as a baby.

I’m not trying to imply that organizing or decluttering are easy tasks or that they’ll automatically lead to a more frugal lifestyle. However, I do believe that purposeful organizing and decluttering will help you accomplish your goals of living more frugally while also helping you to live more simply. I’ve seen it happen in my own life!

Mandi Ehman is the blogger behind Organizing Your Way: A Personalized Approach to Decluttering Your Life and Simple Nest: Where Beauty Meets Simplicity. She believes that living simply makes for a rich and fulfilling life and that time invested in organizing and decluttering pays back exponentially!

This is especially a problem for people who are trying to save money because they believe that as soon as they get rid of the item they’re going to need it and they’ll have to go out and pay cash to replace it. The truth is that you rarely ever need this stuff and you may be losing money by keeping it.

Here are five good reasons that it just doesn’t make sense to save stuff for “someday”:

1.  It takes up room. You have to find a place for every extra item that you have. Many people have storage rooms, garages, attics, extra bedrooms and even full storage lockers filled with stuff. If you didn’t have stuff in here, you could make use of those areas and maybe even make some money off of them. You could rent out the extra bedroom or the added parking space to people who would use them. You could use those spaces as an office and get a tax break when you’re working from home or give up your art studio and work from the attic. Instead you’re just filling that space up with stuff.

2.  It takes up time. Imagine how much time you’d have if you added up all of the time that you spend sorting through your junk to find what you need, organizing it, moving it around the house (or from an old house to a new one) and cleaning it off when it gets filthy. That’s leisure time that you’re wasting right now.

3.  You end up with doubles. People think that they’ll save things for that one day when they need them but what ends up happening with people who have too much stuff is that they don’t even remember what they have. When they need something, they go out and buy another anyway because they’ve forgotten that they already have what they need (or they know they have it but can’t remember where it is). Then you have twice the junk!

4.  You can get cash for it now. A lot of the stuff that you never use could be turned into cash that you can use today. Sell it. If you really need it again later then you can always buy a replacement and consider yourself financially even.

5.  Reducing clutter reduces stress. Don’t you feel better when there’s less clutter around you? When your desk is all cleared off and your inbox is empty, your mind feels clearer. Imagine taking all of the things that you don’t need and just getting rid of them. You’re de-cluttering your life and it feels good!

This was a guest post by Kathryn Vercillo. Kathryn is a writer for Promotionalcodes.org.uk which gives away free promotion code deals (like this hotels.com discount code) and also publishes a frugal blog.

Admittedly, I have accumulated my share of our household junk, and I am trying to inspire members of our household to get rid of theirs. Yard sales are also a great way to generate some quick cash to get that emergency fund in place, or to contribute to your debt snowball. Here are a few yard sale tips our family has implemented over the years to have a successful yard sale.

Scheduling a Yard Sale

1. Schedule a yard sale or garage sale around the first of the month. Most people who are paid monthly, or bi-monthly, receive a paycheck around the 1st of the month (or the end of the previous month). For this reason, we try to schedule yard sales on the first Saturday of the month.

2. Check the 10-day forecast. Nothing ruins a good yard sale faster than rain. Keep an eye on the 10-day forecast before submitting your advertisements and selecting a date. There are no guarantees, but significant weather patterns (fronts, tropical systems, etc.) are fairly predictable within a couple days.

3. Plan on starting early. Most hard-core yard sale scavengers will start looking around 7:00am (some as early as 6:00am).

4. Consider a pre-sale the Friday night before and invite your friends and coworkers. Assuming you don’t mind friends going through your belongings, ask them to come by the night before to look through things ahead of time. I’ve sold some larger items by doing this, including computer monitors, baby furniture, etc. A side benefit of a presale is the more you sale the night before, the less you have to put out on Saturday morning.

Advertising

5. Join forces with friends, neighbors or family members. Block yard sales, or multifamily sales, tend to bring a lot of foot traffic. Consider splitting the cost of advertising amongst all participants and use a portion of your sales to pay for it.

6. Check out free advertising sources. Credit union bulletins and community websites are a great source to advertise your yard sale. Many people also list their yard sales on Craigslist.

7. Use traditional advertising (newspapers) for larger sales. If you are planning to try and sell some high-end items, such as electronics, furniture, or a used car, consider paying to advertise in your local newspaper.

Cheap Yard Sale Signs

8. Keep it simple. Nothing works better than poster board and Sharpie markers. If you have some old boxes lying around you can also gather up some pieces of cardboard to write “YARD SALE” on and include your address.

9. Piggyback on neighboring sales. This is a little trick I picked up as a teenager when my mom would send me around the neighborhood to hang up our signs. I looked in the newspaper Saturday morning to see if there were any other yard sales around our house. I would go to the end of the street these sales were on and hang a sign for our yard sale with a big arrow pointing in the direction of our house. As people left the advertised yard sales they would inevitably see my sign and then look for ours.

10. Advertise around heavily traveled intersections close to your neighborhood. Once you get potential customers in your neighborhood, use remaining signs to lead them to your house.

11. Keep a count of the signs you post, so later you can remember how many to take down. There is nothing worse than seeing a huge, hot pink YARD SALE sign for one that happened last month.

Yard Sale Pricing

12. Leave sentimental value inside the house. People shop yard sales for one reason – to get a deal. Just because the change purse used to belong to your great, great Grandmother who brought it with her from Ireland, it doesn’t mean you should stick a $10 price sticker on it and call it antique. Remember, things are worth only as much as people are willing to pay for them.

13. Sell kids or baby clothing from a big box or plastic bin. Based on the type of clothing, set a fair price for the entire bin and hang a sign made from a half-sheet of paper indicating the price of all items. For example, “BABY CLOTHES – $0.25 each.”

14. If you are short on folding tables, sawhorses and a sheet of plywood make a good table. If you have some old sheets, hang them over the plywood to protect against splinters. This also provides some space under the tables to hide your empty boxes, or additional inventory.

The Day of the Yard Sale

15. Use a staging area the night before the sale. If you have a garage, or another enclosed space you can safely store things overnight, it helps to set up tables the night before. Our family backs the car out of the garage, sets up tables and throws out everything from the boxes the night before. At 6:30 the next morning all you need is some help walking the loaded tables out into your driveway or yard.

16. Have plenty of change on hand. The day before the yard sale I usually make a run by the bank to get some smaller bills and rolled coins. $50 in quarters, ones and fives ought to do it.

17. Consider getting a cash box. Make change from the cash box and place larger bills underneath the cash tray. If you have a wildly successful garage sale, consider making a cash drop by withdrawing the larger bills from your cash box and taking them inside the house. This minimizes the chances of someone making off with all your cash.

18. Remember safety – use the buddy system. The people I’ve encountered in my experience hosting yard sales have all been honest, hard-working folks and genuine collectors. However, the allure of electronics and cash sometimes brings unsavory guests. These types like to try to create a distraction so another one can make off with the cash box. Work in pairs and assign someone to always have an eye on the money.

If you’ve got too much clutter that falls under the “can’t-be-sold” category, you can call a company like this junk removal of Mississauga service; they’ll haul anything you don’t need off to recycling, a charitable center or the dump.

Reducing clutter should be high on everyone’s priority list.

Try using the T.A.M.E. method to get a handle on both your electronic and hard copy clutter:

Trash what you don’t need. Get rid of the duplicates of the duplicates. And quickly delete those e-mails or attachments from your mother or your best friend that you “just have to forward.” Yeah, they’re funny, cute, and heartwarming, but they are cluttering up your life and your inbox!

Act quickly with all communications. That is, decide to DO something with it right away. Now. Delete it, throw it away, reply to it, or file it. If it can be done is less than two minutes, DO IT. You can use the Getting Things Done method and create files such as

• A projects file
• Project supported material
• Calendar of actions and information
• A “next actions” file
• A “waiting for” file
• Reference material
• A “maybe someday” file

By taking action, even if it’s to decide to defer a task, at least you’ve made an attempt to keep your clutter under control.

Make the time to keep organized. The old saying goes, “Dig your well before you’re thirsty.” Before you get overwhelmed with clutter and paperwork, take the time to create those folders I just listed. It will make life so much easier if you file your documents and you’re easily able to find them later. Make sure you label your folders with an accurate name so that when you attempt to retrieve the information, your labels make sense to you and to others who may need to access your files.

Effective and effortless response. Which is the easiest (and most effective) way to respond to this communication? It could be email, letter, phone, delegation through another person, or eyeball to eyeball? Since most paperwork requires some sort of a response, always use the easiest or most effective way for YOU to respond.

We can click one setting and then trust our computers to save every single document (which is unnecessary), but it’s just as easy to become paranoid and make hard copies of everything, like my co-worker. Yes, it’s important to back up your computer files, but you don’t need a hard copy of every e-mail you’ve ever received. Nor do you need to save every letter you receive or send. To get a better grip on your paperwork, use good judgment, common sense, and the suggestions provided through the T.A.M.E. method.

This was a guest post from Ron Haynes who writes daily at The Wisdom Journal on issues such as wise choices, personal finance, business, and life in general. If you like this article, go ahead and subscribe to his site via RSS or email. It’s FREE!

When moving things over to my new wallet I looked at all the items out on the desk and thought, “Do I really need to sit on this stuff all day?” I’m not just concerned with ergonomics, I’m concerned with my lack of wallet organization. I can rarely find my Kroger Plus card on demand at the checkout, and have to fumble around for my insurance card when checking in at the doctor. Maybe it’s time to inventory my wallet and purge a few useless items. Here’s what was in my wallet:

• Primary Checking Account Check Card. This Visa check card handles expenses our budget envelopes don’t cover. I typically use this to buy gas, clothes for the kids, and for our monthly trip to Sam’s Club for paper products, detergents, etc.

• Online Savings Account ATM Card. My ATM card accesses my emergency fund stashed away in an online savings account. Online savings accounts are nice, but some take three or four business days to transfer money back to your primary checking account. If you don’t have a card with ATM access it could leave you in a bind if you have to pay a plumber for an emergency late-night repair.

• Kroger Plus Card. Kroger is our primary store for grocery shopping. We take advantage of their coupon doubling policy to get great deals listed on The Grocery Game.

• Library Card. To reach my goal of 52 books in 2008 I had to enlist the help of a regional library located in a neighboring town. They have an excellent selection in the personal finance and personal productivity genre.

• 10 CashCrate business cards. I like to drop these CashCrate business cards in my shopping cart, bills and post on bulletin boards around town. They have my CashCrate referral link where people may sign up to complete surveys. I’ve used CashCrate for over a year and it has contributed significantly to my debt snowball. Best of all, I ordered them for free at VistaPrint.com. Vista Print will ship out 250 template business cards for a small shipping fee in exchange for their logo being placed on the back of your card.

• 1 Emergency Check. I don’t carry my checkbook with me, but have run into occasions where I needed to write a check. For this reason I carry a single check folded in the back of my wallet just in case.

• 5 $1 Bills. Unfortunately, I did this exercise right after my daughter hit me up for $20 to buy her school yearbook. It’s hard to believe it is already time to order yearbooks! Where has the school year gone?

• Blockbuster Membership Card. This one has not seen much action since I canceled our Blockbuster Total Access membership. I switched to Blockbuster from Netflix because I thought the idea of returning movies in the store and picking up a new one would be convenient. Just about the time I started enjoying the membership Blockbuster decided to limit the number of in-store returns each month. I promptly complained and canceled my membership. I may renew my Netflix membership soon because without cable our options are pretty limited.

• Office Depot Advantage Membership Card. Another one that hasn’t seen much daylight thanks to my frugal streak. I used to buy ink, paper and basic office supplies here for the rewards, but have since found cheaper alternatives such as re-manufactured ink cartridges.

• Travel Club Card. It’s only a few dollars a month, and it gives me peace of mind when my wife travels.

• Driver’s License. Standard issue for any wallet. I did notice that the listed weight was WAY understated since my last renewal…shhhh!

• Health Insurance Card. This card lists deductibles and co-pay percentages. When you visit a new doctor they will ask for a copy of your proof of insurance. If you are ever in a accident it helps to have this handy to give to medical personnel.

• Company Division Directory. A coworker had a great idea to make wallet cards with important contact information for key personnel in our division and laminate it for protection. I carry it with me, since you know I don’t have a Blackberry, PDA or other electronic gadget to store numbers. Believe it or not, pens and paper still work just fine.

Well, that’s quite a list for such a small wallet – no wonder my back hurts after sitting in an office chair all day! I decided to keep most of these items in my new wallet, but I grouped them more logically and took advantage of the new wallet’s improved design.

One thing not in my wallet (sorry Capital One) is a credit card. I used to carry several cards, and then I scaled down to just one. However, I removed the temptation to spend by taking that last “emergency” card out of my wallet and placed it in a safe place at home. I do take it with me when I travel, but it is reserved strictly for emergencies. When my emergency fund is fully funded the associated check card will replace this last credit card.