Each week we are posting a one-minute-ish quick video tip on something useful and practical that you can apply right away! Quick question- how many remotes does it take to turn on a television? First you have to find the remote, am I right? Watch this Clutter Video Tip to regain control. (Click here to watch on YouTube if you can’t see the embedded player.)
Transcript:
Hi, I’m Lorie Marrero, and today’s Clutter Video Tip is about remote controls. We have so many remote controls in our lives nowadays. We have home theater equipment and sound systems, along with the normal just T.V. and VCR or DVD player that we typically have. And we need to centralize those remotes as much as possible into one, or just a couple, of universal remotes. So you can certainly buy universal remotes that are supposed to do everything, but a lot of your remotes come with that capability. This is the one that comes with our local cable company’s box and across the top there is a row of buttons here for DVD, VCR, TV, lots of devices that you can program into this one so that you only use this instead of all of the clutter that you would have around normally on the table.
So, what you want to do is find the original instructions you had that came with the device, or if you don’t have those it’s fairly easy to find those on-line nowadays. And you can find out how to program this, take a few minutes of focus so that you can enjoy your leisure time a little bit more, learn how to program it, and then what you want to do is capture that information in case the batteries go dead or for some other reason you need to re-program this remote, you will have the information you need. So if you have the original instructions, you can cut out the little part that says, you know, how to do the programming, fold that up really small, and you can just tuck that inside the battery compartment and keep it there on top of the batteries. That’s one way to do it. If you don’t have the instructions, you can use your label maker to summarize what the instructions were and maybe capture the two or three digit code that came with your particular television or whatever and put those labels on the inside of the battery compartment cover and then you’ve got that information for later.
Another thing to think about with your remotes is having a home for them – so, there are the ones that are unused you can put in a side table drawer or you can put them next to your home theater equipment on the shelf, and then the one that you primarily use you want to agree with your family on a home for that one in particular. So it might just mean that you have a place on the table where you all agree to put it when you’re finished. But one way that you can handle this is by using Velcro. We’ve done this a lot of times in our clients’ homes. You can put the fuzzy soft piece of Velcro on the remote itself and the prickly hook side of the Velcro on the side of the piece of furniture or the back of something near where you sit most often to watch television. And that way you can just Velcro that thing wherever you’d like it to stick, and get it out of the way.
If you’d like some great tips on how to organize your life, your living room, whatever you need, you can visit our free tips page at clutterdiet.com/freetips.
See you next time, and may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.
You may have been looking for how to stop losing the remote or how to keep track of remote controls.
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