Spring Cleaning + Blog Reading
It’s going to be in the 70s this weekend in Nashville. I am looking forward to getting the windows open and tackling some spring cleaning projects.
To keep me motivated, I am joining my friend Tsh from Simple Mom for her annual Project Simplify.
Here’s the schedule:
1. Drawers and Shelves (week of April 9)
2. That Pesky Closet (week of April 16)
3. Piles (week of April 23)
4. That Put-Off Project (week of April 30)
For details, click here. I’ll be posting my progress each Monday. I have been working hard on the drawers and shelves project all week.
Another spring cleaning project I have been working on is getting my feed reader cleaned up and organized. Do you know what a feed reader is? Essentially it is an online tool that let’s you store all your favorite blogs and websites in one place. You go to that one site and bam! everything that has been updated recently shows up.
Many people use Google Reader, but it is closing its online doors in July, so it is time to move your feeds somewhere else. If you have never used a reader, maybe spring is the time to clean up your bookmark bar and set up a reader!?
Thankfully, I never jumped on the Google Reader bandwagon. I set up a Netvibes account years ago, but then I just stopped using it and started visiting sites manually. So over the past week I have been slowly working through my Netvibes account, deleting blog that are out of date or I don’t read anymore, adding new ones, etc. Netvibes is very easy to use and has a clean interface that I like. You can even set up tabs for different categories of content, if you want. (I have a friends/family tab, a frugal tab, an (in)courage bloggers tab, etc.) I’m excited to start using it again because it is such an efficient way to keep up with blogs. The only down side is that it doesn’t have a phone or iPad app, I have used it for so long, I don’t really want to make a switch.
Here are a few other feed reader options that I have read about. Many will let you import right from Google Reader, which is cool.
Of course, you can also sign up to receive your favorite blogs via email. (Did you know that every month I do a drawing for my email subscribers for a $75 Lisa Leonard gift card? Pretty awesome! You can sign up in the box at the bottom of this post.)
Do you use an RSS reader? Subscribe to blogs via email? Use bookmarks?
Also, what spring cleaning projects are you hoping to tackle this season? Will you be joining in Project Simplify?
I’m glad to see “piles” has a week of its own. That’s our problem. I get so frustrated feeling like there is just STUFF everywhere, and want to pitch it all!
But anyway, this weekend for us will be outside projects, since it will finally be nice. We’re going to Home Depot today and hope to beautify the yard tomorrow!
I’ve been a Google Reader girl for ages, so I’ll probably switch to Feedly or another one that lets you import straight from there. I’m bummed about igoogle going away. I like having everything on one dashboard.
Netvibes does let you have a dashboard, which is awesome. I have my gmail, FB, Twitter all is on that homepage. 🙂
Oh, good luck! I’m about to embark on our spring cleaning in about half an hour – it’s going to be quite the job!
I have Google Reader but I never use it… I prefer to get blog updates through email, like I do with your s 🙂
I have a gazillion spring cleaning projects I want to do – closets, laundry room, kids room.. uhhh.. so daunting. We aren’t getting 70 degree weather (that I know of) in Michigan, so I may have to wait but thanks for the link. I’ll check into it 🙂
Hi! I’ve just stumbled onto your website and I’m looking forward to reading more. I have a question about feeds and readers. I rarely subscribe to blogs but read them daily through my Feedly account. As a blogger, do you get good data on where those readers are. Owing from? I’ve just started a blog and am still on my huge learning curve! Thanks and good luck with the spring cleaning.
No, if a reader is exclusively reading in a reader, you can’t track their visits. I hope that helps.
My primary goal is to get some of my recipes organized! I created a new binder to save recipes that I have (or hope to) used from various blogs, so now I just have to fill the sleeves with printed recipes.
I also want to get a head start on a number of upcoming blog posts so that I have options versus trying to rush to complete one at the last minute.
Thank you for sharing NetVibes. I need to look into that. I use Feedly currently but it doesn’t have the analytics functionality that NetVibes seems to offer. Also enjoy breaking down organization projects by week. Great guideline! One online thing I definitely need to do is organize my email better. I currently organize by folders via gmail but that doesn’t seem to cut it.