One Caveman's Financial Journey » Charity

Declutter and Donate and Reap the Tax Rewards

That One Caveman — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 12:30:09 +0000

Ahh, it’s Spring cleaning time again! This year the cleaning bug bit me hard and I went from room to room looking for junk that was cluttering up my house and my life. Armed with a large cardboard box and a roll of trash bags, I scoured each room for trash and donate-able items. If I found an item that might have value to someone else, it went in the donation box while worthless, spent junk went in the bag. By the time I finished the upstairs, I had filled up the box more than twice and carted out three bags of trash.

Cramped closets quickly opened up and a stuffed spare bedroom became accessible again. It wasn’t like they were packed with garbage. On the contrary, everything that was removed from those rooms was purchased with good intentions but just never left when its usefulness had expired.

Clutter is dangerous in many ways. It can be a fire or health hazard when it impedes your movement or gathers too much dust, it can sap the usefulness of your home by wasting space, and it can steal your money by forcing you to re-buy things you already own.

Clutter Is a Hazard

While finishing our basement, we were forced to move all our stored belongings to an unused upstairs bedroom. Box after box was moved to the room until there was no more free space and then we closed the door. Over the winter, more things were shoved into that “temporary” storage room until they no longer fit and we were forced to stack things next to the door in the hallway.

I can’t tell you how many times I stubbed my toe on a box, or had to shuffle around the stuff while carrying my baby. Now imagine if (heaven forbid) we had a fire. That junk suddenly endangers the lives of my whole family by possibly blocking a useful exit from our home.

After the first round of Spring cleaning, the hallway is clear and more than half of the stuff stored in that room has been thrown away, donated, or filed away where it belonged in the first place.

Clutter Wastes Space and Time

For the last year and a half, I have been unable to park my truck in the garage. Shelves stuffed with things I thought I might need later multiplied into tools, equipment, and supplies stacked on the garage floor and taking up a full parking spot. Last week, I entered the garage with a mission of parking the new car we’re planning to buy in its rightful place in the garage from Day 1. After a few hours of heavy labor, I had two truck loads of things to donate and an almost-clean garage. I still have a few more hours of work to organize my space, but I should be able to park inside again soon.

By letting that junk accumulate over the last three years, I prevented myself from using my garage for its original purpose and I had to brave the elements every day I left for work. I can’t even being to imagine the hours I wasted over those years scraping frost, snow, and ice from my truck. So, as a side effect of the wasted space, it also wasted my time.

Clutter Costs You Money

While cleaning out one closet, I found six dusty, empty picture frames. This discovery came just a few days after buying three new picture frames to display the latest photos of our children. Since I forgot about those frames, I ended up wasting $10 on new frames.

In the same closet, I found two piles of winter clothes that had been stacked last Spring to make room for warm-weather clothes. This winter, I was forced to buy two new pairs of jeans and a few shirts to fill a gap in my wardrobe. What I didn’t know was that “gap” could have been filled about five feet below where the new clothes were hung. Now that I’ve already replaced those clothes, they’ll be donated instead of stored for another year.

Donate Your Clutter and Claim Your Tax Reward

Twice each year, my church hosts a rummage sale where people bring in “yard sale or better” quality items and the church sells them as a fundraiser for missions. If your church or another organization you support doesn’t host sales like that, you can always donate to the Salvation Army, Goodwill, or other charity thrift stores.

The important thing to remember is to track the proper resale value of the donated items. A general rule of thumb is to claim no more than the average amount that the item could be resold for at a thrift store or yard sale. Both the Salvation Army and Goodwill websites include basic valuation guides. While it’s a mostly on-your-honor deduction, the last thing you want to do is suffer an audit for improperly claiming donations. (For more information on the rules concerning charitable donations, see IRS Publication 526.)

The easiest way to handle this is to document everything you donate before you take it to the charity and (if you’re very cautious) take photos of all the donated items. That way you can help prove you donated the items and it will help in assigning values to the items. We ended up with two pages worth of donations listed with an estimated value of nearly $300. While it’s not a huge amount, that’s “free money” come tax time when listing our charitable donations.

Enjoy Your Reclaimed Space

It’s amazing how good it feels to be able to walk through the hallway safely, no matter what time of day or night. It’s great to walk into our closet and immediately find exactly what I’m looking for. It’s liberating to have the room to properly store my belongings in our designated storage areas instead of “wherever I find room”.

Now that you’re free from clutter, your next goal should be to keep it from coming back. Easier said than done, I know, but just remember how this feels right now and it should be easier.

Photo by: sindesign

Teach a Child, Save a Generation – Blog Action Day 2008

That One Caveman — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:22:02 +0000

Across the world, children are suffering from the pains of a prison called poverty. Children are crying out in hunger and desperation because they happened to be born into an unfortunate situation.

On their own, they have no hope of escaping the cycle of poverty. They cannot get the nutrition they hunger for; they cannot get the water they thirst for; they cannot get the education they long for. And orphans fare even worse since they are completely at the mercy of the people that surround them.

Here in the modernized Western world, we’ve insulated ourselves fairly well from poverty. We haven’t stamped it out, but we have eliminated all but the smallest pockets of poverty. The plight of hundreds of millions of people in another continent can seem so small and far away. But the impact of widespread poverty still affects us.

Imagine for a moment if everyone had easy and open access to at least a decent grade school education. Knowledge of basic math and science would give people a footing by which to understand how the world works; health education would teach how to prevent many common, but debilitating diseases and afflictions like AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and the Guinea worm disease; and language education would erase illiteracy and enable communication on a much larger scale.

By educating just one child, he now has the chance to rise above the pack and be more than another hungry beggar. That child grows up and is able to be more productive than his parents. He may have picked up a skill such as agriculture and now he’s not only able to feed himself, but his family and some of his neighbors as well. Now, when that child eventually has children of his own, he will pass his knowledge on to them and immediately they will have a better start than he did.

By educating one child, you set off a chain reaction that begins to change everything around him for the better. Soon, poverty is being stamped out from within. And all it took was a relatively small investment in education. It all boils down to the proverbial phrase,

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.”

How To Help

Ask a church – My church has partnered with a number of ministries to help feed and educate children in Honduras, the Philippines, and Liberia. For less than 50 cents a day, a child can go to school for a year. I’m sure a church in your area is working to sponsor children in third-world countries.
Go and Teach – By joining up with the Peace Corps, you can go into the heart of the poverty-stricken area and effect change yourself. While this isn’t for everyone, it’s a great way to ensure that your efforts go directly to the children who need you the most.
You Tell Me – What other reputable ministries and organizations are out there that strive to teach children so they can lift themselves out of poverty? Please tell me in the comments and hopefully we can get a huge list together that everyone can use!

Others from my blogroll taking part in Blog Action Day 08 include:

Photo by: carf

Stock Up For Others At Back-To-School Sales

That One Caveman — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:19:58 +0000

Photo credit: evelynishere

I remember back in elementary school that you never really had to worry about running out of paper. Even though you were supposed to bring your own, you could always count on the teacher to bail you out with a sheet or two in a pinch. What I didn’t know then is those sheets of paper were likely bought with her own money.

Long gone are the days of the school supply cabinet. With shrinking education budgets nationwide and barely enough money to pay for the essentials, “free” pencils and paper that once were provided by generous school administrators are now coming straight from the teacher’s own personal stash. While some office supply stores will cut local teachers a break when they’re stocking up their classrooms, it’s still taking money directly from the pockets of our nation’s underpaid school teachers.

Unfortunately, there will always be forgetful children who neglect to pack enough paper, clumsy children who will break their last pencil, and poorer children who can’t afford the basic supplies for school. It is because of their love for these children that teachers willingly spend their own money to help their students’ education. But the drought in budgeted education spending by our elected leaders is no excuse for further burdening the teachers of our children with more personal expenses.

How You Can Help

To aid these generous civil servants, schools allow for donations of school supplies from individuals and businesses. They all have a great need for paper and pencils and I’m sure various specialized departments would appreciate out-of-the-ordinary donations such as graph paper, art supplies, and even musical instruments.

It doesn’t take much to lend a hand. All you have to do is scour for the best deals and remember that name brands don’t do provide any extra educational benefit. Mead may be a great company, but buying their supplies means each dollar you spend does that much less help versus buying store-branded or even unbranded supplies.

For example, two weeks ago, Office Depot held an great sale where many school-required supplies were on sale for 5 cents apiece or less. We traveled to both Office Depot stores in town and bought the maximum we were allowed of paper, folders, pencils, and crayons. We ended the day with four bags full of supplies for just $40 – all of which (except one box of crayons we gave to our daughter) will go to a local elementary school.

After the great deals we found there, we’ve made sure to examine every glossy advertisement we find in the paper or that comes in the mail to ensure we don’t miss out on another great sale. Teachers are an underpaid, under-appreciated resource and I want to do everything I can to help them educate our children. If it means spending a little extra that I wouldn’t have otherwise to help out some needy children and the teachers who mentor them, I believe that’s an easy sacrifice to make.

If you would like to pitch in, contact a nearby school and ask them directly if there are any supplies they need. School administrators have huge shopping lists that they’re more than willing to share with anyone who might be inclined to donate. If you can only afford to donate an extra box of pencils, that will be just as welcome as donating a grand piano to the music department – every little bit helps if it goes toward educating our nation’s children.

(c) 2007-2009, That One Caveman, http://www.thatonecaveman.com