More and more appliances and electronics arrive with just a thin instruction booklet and website reference. Thank goodness! I used to have an entire file cabinet drawer just for instruction books and manuals.
We kept them for TVs, the dishwasher, washer/dryer and hundreds of toys. Good grief, every toy required specialized batteries and came with an order form to purchase more. The packaging included warranty cards and instruction booklets which added to the paper clutter. Multiply that by all the generous family members buying Christmas and birthday presents for my son and it’s no wonder, we had an entire drawer full of manuals.
Thankfully times have changed, but manuals are still a clutter culprit. In reality, we do not need a lot of storage for these books.
Decluttering Challenge Day 20
- Collect and Review – Bring all your manuals together in a box. Toss books for appliances you no longer own.
- Go Paperless – Check manufacturer websites. Download a digital copy. Store them on Google Drive, Evernote or Dropbox.
- YouTube – I can’t tell you the last time we actually used the digital copy of an instruction book. In fact, I tried to find out how to replace the water filter in our refrigerator. The manual let me down, but YouTube solved this problem in about 3 minutes.
Maybe today is your day to recycle an entire box of manuals!
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