Do you need cash from the car for another purchase or expense? While donating a car comes with tax benefits, you won’t see those benefits until the following tax season, said Mark Scoot, spokesman for AutoTrader.com.

Donate your car if it is a clunker or your goal is simply to get it out of the driveway. Most charities that accept car donations will pick them up within days of your call, Scott said.

If you’re donating your car, make sure you keep a good record of its condition and any evidence you can find for its market value, Soctt said. If you get audited, the Internal Revenue Serivice is going to want you to prove you didn’t inflate the value for the bigger tax break, he said. If your car or boat is worth more than $500, the IRS is going to want to see evidence of how much the charity got for it. (Most charities that accept these donations turn around and sell them for cash.) You’ll need to get a receipt from the charity revealing exactly how much money it made.

You won’t need evidence of the sales price if the charity keeps the vehicle or vessel and uses it in its charitable work, or if your donation is worth less than $500. Then you can report its fair market value based on listings from Kelley Blue Book and similar sources.

You can choose from an extensive list of some of America’s most respected local and national charities such as American Diabetes Association, American Kidney Fund, Cancer Research Institute, American Red Cross, United Way, United Breast Cancer Foundation, Humane Society, SPCA and many others. For a complete list visit http://www.donateacar.com/alphabetical.php

On the site listed above they even offer you a free travel gift and provide the paperwork for you to do take the tax deduction.

Make sure you avoid middlemen. Numerous for-profit intermediary organizations advertise aggressively offering to help you donate your vehicle to charity but they typically keep about 50 percent to 90 percent of the vehicle’s value for themselves.

In order for you to qualify for a deduction, the charity that gets your donation must be an IRS-approved 501(c)(3) organization.

Make sure you formally re-title the vehicle to the charity, and report the transfer to your state’s department of motor vehicles or licensing. Never agree to leave the ownership space on the charity donation papers blank.

Experts advise keeping a thorough paper trail. If your donation is worth more than $500, you’ll have to attach IRS Form 8283 to your tax return. If it’s worth more than $5,000, your documentation must include an outside appraisal. You’ll also need proof of the donation, such as a receipt from the charity and a copy of the title change.

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If books are overcrowding shelf or basket space, it’s time to reassess, says professional organizer Erica Ecker, owner of the organizing company The Spacialist. Did the book change your life? Do you get nostalgic when you see the binding?

Out-of-date paperbacks can go into the mixed paper bin at the recycling center or at curbside if the city or county picks up paper. Some take hardcovers, too, so check.

Sell newer book on sites like Amazon.com or Half.com an eBay company with fixed prices and no listing fees.

If the book is autographed, a first edition or was written by a high-profile author who has passed away, consider listing it on eBay. Half.com sellers can choose to have their listing show up on eBay product pages at no extra cost.

You can also donate books to a charity, such as an organization that promotes literacy, or take them to an independent book seller for money or credit.

Another option is to register your book with BookCrossing.com. Just visit the site, register your book and print out a label to stick inside the book. Then, send it out into the world by leaving it on a park bench, donating it to charity or giving it to a friend. If someone comes across your book, they can visit the site and let you know where it ended up!

You may also want to consider exchanging books with friends. You could simply have a shelf of old books that you don’t want by the door, and encourage your friends to take books that looked interesting. You could also have a book swap party, where everyone brings a box of old books to a central location for the others to look through. After the book swap, box up the remainder of the books and donate them to charity.

Arrange the books you have left on the shelves by category, grouping like with like. For fiction, you can categorize by novels, short stories, plays, and children’s books. Good non fiction categories include reference, biography, history , reilgion, English, arts, science , math, health/medicine, craft/hobbies, travel and photo albums, scrapbooks and yearbooks.

Within each category, alphabetize books by author. Keep heavier books on the bottom shelves and lighter books on the top shelves.

Want to find out how to get cash for clutter read our post on Cash for Clutter

Found this article in the business section and thought you would find it useful. The article basically discusses the economics of outsourcing your mundane chores. I have summarized the important points.

Did you think only celebrities and really wealthy people can afford personal assistants? Think again. There are many websites out there that can assist you with a wide variety of tasks ranging from writing thank you notes to following up on lost luggage.

One woman uses a site called AskSunday.com to deal with lost luggage, security issues with credit cards and reservations problems. When asked how she justifies the cost she said it costs about the same price as cable tv and eliminates so many of the headaches in her life, that it is totally worth it.

Prices and packages vary from site to site: On AskSunday.com users can pay 29.00 per month for 15 “requests” while the site GetFriday.com offers pay-as-you-go and monthly plans, in increments of 10 to 15 minutes. The monthly plans start at $120.00 a month for 10 hours.

Tim Ferriss, author of The Four-Hour Workweek, uses what he calls a “small army” of virtual assistants for everything from checking his e-mail to screening his phone calls and sending gifts to family and friends. He also uses a virtual assistant to find and schedule dates for him where he can promote his product. Ferriss says if you make more than $30,000.00 a year, you can afford to outsource some of your more routine tasks.

A marketing consultant uses Elance.com to find graphic designers for his website, find vegetarian-friendly restaurants, organize his Netflix account, plan a baby shower and bid for items on e-Bay.

Security issues are always a concern and Ferriss says that he has never had any problems. He does suggest though using trusted sites like PayPal.com when possible and using credit instead of debit cards to minimize potential damage.

Some sites, like AskSunday.com keep logins and passwords in a secured database so that its employees can use certain accounts but cannot see login or password information.

The article ends with a quote from the author of The Four-Hour Work Week which I thought summed it up well. “Ultimately, time is the most valuable, nonrenewable resource that we have.”

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Here is a very easy method to use when sorting through your daily mail. This method comes from the book Organizing for Dummies by Eileen Roth and Elizabeth Miles. They call it R-A-P-I-D which stands for read, attend, pay, important and dump. Here is how you do it:

Read: Anything that you need to read goes in this stack. These are usually magazines, newsletters and catalogs you are actually interested in.

Attend: Notices and invitations for seminars, workshops, meetings, performances, parties and so on go in to attend stack.

Pay: If somebody wants you to pay for something, put in the to pay pile. Window envelopes are an easy cue. If it looks like a credit card offer your don’t want, Organizing for Dummies suggests ripping through the envelope and tossing. If you routinely shred all documents that are sensitive you may want to have an additional to shred stack. The good thing is you save time here because you don’t even bother opening the envelope.

Important: Presume important until proven innocents, and put all unknown mail into this stack.

Dump: If you know right away you won’t read it or need it, do not open the envelope. Do dump that piece of mail into a trash can or paper recycling bin.

These are just you’re preliminary sorting steps. We’ll post again with more details on what to do once you have sorted your mail.

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Like any other job it easier to do if you have the right tools. Here are some favorites of mine and others I have come across in my travels:

Stackable bins – You can use these for toys, clothes, art-work, papers, school memos, shoes etc. You can buy them in different colors and color code them. A lot families use a certain color for each member of the family. They are cheap and plus you can stack them high and make use of vertical space.

Solid plastic bins on wheels - These are great for kids toys and art supplies because they can wheel them where ever they go and can be pushed into closets to hideaway. I like them for dirty shoes in the laundry room. When I need to mop the floor I just pile all the shoes in there and wheel them out and the floor is clear.

Multi-level organizers - These are free standing open shelf units which can come with or without wheels. In the garage you can use these for sports equipment, gardening supplies,outdoor game equipment and painting supplies. Indoors you can use them to store video game equipment and videos, boxes of craft supplies, magazines and art projects in progress and books. Again you can even assign each child a shelf and keep school items there.

Four drawer organizer – These are made of clear or colored plastic and can be with or without wheels. I use these in the garage to store painting supplies – brushes, gloves, paint stirrer etc. I also use them in the hall closets to store seasonal decorations, replacement light bulbs, and old pictures. These are great for kids toys and art supplies because they can wheel them out when they are needed, pull out the drawers to reach things easily and then put it all back in the easily because the drawers are on the floor at their level. You put the drawers back in the unit and you’re set. I use smaller versions of these four drawer organizers in the bathroom to hold flossers, pony tail bands and razor blade cartridge replacements.

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