The start of the Year is one of the best times to take stock of your life and perform some variation on the “out with the old, in with the new” routine. Whether it’s starting a workout routine, kicking a bad habit, or simply eliminating clutter so you can enjoy your favorite luxuries, now is the time to refresh, revamp, and start anew.

January is the National Association of Professional Organizers’ (who knew there were professional organizers?) “Get Organized Month”, so why not start the Year with a clean slate? According to NAPO’s president Standolyn Robertson, “getting organized is one of the top five New Year’s resolutions that people make” and keeping a cleaner, more organized house is one of the easiest resolutions to fulfill. It virtually guarantees you’ll feel calmer and more relaxed, and besides, your home should be your sanctuary from chaos and disorder, not part of the problem.

Websites like Unclutterer and Organized With Style can be very helpful when getting started. It’s typically best to take inventory of everything in your storage spaces and then get ruthless in your editing – if you haven’t worn or used something in over a year, do you really need to keep it? Perhaps it’s taking up space that could be used for something much more useful, fabulous, or enjoyable.

Once you determine what to keep, toss, recycle, and donate, you’ll need an organizing system to keep it all in order. Fortunately, 3LUXE has just what you’re looking for in our reviews of Best of Closet Organizers and Best Of Home Office Cabinets. After all, once you make the effort to get everything organized, you’ll want to keep it that way, and an orderly system is necessary to make a lasting change.

Now depending on how seriously you take your re-organization project, you may find yourself with more room than you know what to do with, so be sure to check out 3LUXE’s home section to find luxurious reviews on everything from plush mattresses and high thread count sheets (a good night’s sleep is a true luxury in any case) to billiards tables (you may find space you never knew you had).

No matter what you decide to do, make sure that 2008 is the year your home becomes your palace.

All the best,
Bill

The best thing about Google is the vast amounts of information it gathers and categorizes. If it’s out there, Google brings it back in its results.

The worst thing about Google is the vast amounts of information it gathers and categorizes. If it’s out there, Google brings it back in its results.

Therein lies the paradox.

Autobytel recently fielded a study that found that 7 out of 10 Americans suffer from what they’ve categorized as Search Engine Fatigue—a condition/malady/sickness/state of mind that comes from not finding what you’re looking for on the web.

Luckily, there is a remedy.

Search engine fatigue is the genesis of our site 3LUXE. We didn’t know the term, but we certainly suffered from it.

We (my wife, two kids and I) moved into a new house (new to us, really old in fact and needing lots of updating) in the summer of ‘06, which immediately put us in the market for a number of big-ticket items. Having to buy so many things all at once really brought into sharp focus that there was no one source that easily identified the best items for purchase.

To be clear, recommendations and reviews weren’t impossible to find.

Just frustrating.

And time consuming.

The search engines gave us millions of results, and the information existed within those, but it took a ton of time to winnow through the results to find those that were really relevant. And the shopping comparison engines were only of real use when we already knew what we wanted to purchase.

That’s why we created 3LUXE—we research thousands of products in hundreds of categories and only post reviews on the three we’ve found to be best in each category. We find these products through online and offline research, including personal use where possible. Essentially doing the research people would do if they had more time. With a goal of being the first place you go, before you go shopping.

Barry Schwartz of Swarthmore College wrote a book about how more is often less. It’s called The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. It’s a great read and I highly recommend it no matter what business you’re in.

The main theme of the book is that when there are too many choices, or too much information, your brain can’t reasonably process all of the trade-offs that are possible. There are too many options to be considered. Too many variables to weigh. It’s nearly impossible for you to feel confident that you’re making the right decision. In the end, most of us make no decision (i.e. purchase) at all. The Autobytel/Kelton Research study showed the same result, 75% of those who suffer from Search Engine Fatigue get up and walk away from their computers.

That’s phenomenal.

That’s the paradox of choice brought to life.

That’s the reason why we started 3LUXE.

All the best,

Doug

In today’s consumer driven culture we have grown accustomed to, and expect options. Whether we’re choosing a product or deciding where buy it from, we want options. Many times the number of options available can be overwhelming and we need a simple solution (like 3LUXE). Other times we know exactly what we want to buy, but want options on where to buy.

For many of us, myself included, iTunes has become the de facto option when it comes to purchasing music. One of the issues with iTunes; most of the purchased music can only be played in iTunes or on an iPod. If you have a zune, rio or one of the hundreds of other players available, you can’t take the music with you. Now thanks to Amazon there is an option. Amazon (AMZN) released AmazonMP3 in beta today. This new service offers songs for $.89 and there is no Digital Rights Management (DRM). No DRM means you can play the music you buy, on any player.

The Amazon offering requires you to install Amazon’s MP3 downloader on your computer. When installed, you can buy and download music from Amazon and it will be automatically added to iTunes. This afternoon I was looking for the song 1234 by Feist (the song from the new Nano commercials). I made the choice to buy it from Amazon (along with a John Coltrane Album). I now have the option to play those songs in iTunes, on my iPod, or my Rio Sport MP3 player. Amazon’s beta library is limited compared to iTunes and the purchase process isn’t as elegant. But they are pushing innovation and change to give us all another option.

Thanks to Amazon, I get the music I want, and I have the option to listen to it, where I want.

All the best,
Bill