31 Days of Clearning: Day 2

Day 2: Paper Piles

My biggest struggle in regards to clutter has always been paper piles.  Bills, catalogs, junk mail, coupons, receipts, brochures, maps, notes jotted down to research something later, things that should be filed like information from the vet, health insurance, auto insurance, resumes, paid bills, etc.  I can usually find what I'm looking for if it is on a piece of paper somewhere in my home, but I'm tired of the piles.  

I can have a relatively clean and uncluttered home, until you start looking closer.  If, to my dismay, you do decide to take a closer look, you'll find stacks of paper in the kitchen chair, dining room chair, on the kitchen island, in a stack in the guest bedroom, in a stack in my office, and in two or three carry-all totes. I am getting better about immediately weeding through the mail when it arrives and throwing out (recycling) the junk mail.  There was a time when I had to open EVERY. PIECE. OF. MAIL.  It looked like junk mail; paper from insurance companies other than who I do business with, envelopes that say "dated material, open immediately," and plain looking mail with just a return address but no company name.  But, I couldn't toss it until I knew what it was, and I didn't have time at that moment to look at every piece of mail, so ... it went into a pile. 

I've often taken several weekends just to sort through paper and put related material into related piles.  Then, the need to use the dining room table would arise, or company was coming, so the sorted papers went back into a pile.  But it was a sorted pile, I'd reason.  So the next time I decided to dive into papers, it would already be started.  I couldn't file things because my file cabinets were already bursting with files and I needed to weed out and start fresh with a new filing system.  So, the piles grew.  

Today, I deal with the mail as soon as I bring it in the house.  If it's a bill, it goes into a bill drawer.  If it's junk, the recycle bin is right behind where I sort mail.  I still end up with a pile of something that I want to look at later though. Today, you can access almost anything online; from your health records to vendor statements, so it is easier to "go green" and eliminate much of the paper. I'm getting much better at staying on top of the paper tiger before it devours me.  But, I still have those other piles, from before I made the decision to tackle that paper tiger.  And I still have the overflowing files that need weeded out before I can jump into getting things filed.  So today, I took one of those piles and dumped it out on my kitchen island.  

I threw out what I could, and used a handy filing organizer tool for the rest.  Instead of putting remaining paper in another pile only to "touch" it multiple more times in the future, it's at least in an alphabetical system until I revamp my files.

With that one pile, I filled up a recycle box and now my kitchen island looks like this.

One pile down, and just a few more to go.  :)