Organizing Paper

When I teach our paper survival classes, people usually ask me what is the best way to sort paper. My pat response is: "The way that works for you." I shared earlier how to start sorting your backlog of papers. For sake of space, I chose one method that seems to work well for many people.

I heard some interesting statistics on junk mail the other day that I thought that I would share. Please note that I can not verify these statistics. But, if you don't think that junk mail has an impact on our time, energy, and environment then take a look at these: 

• Every adult will spend an average of 8 months of their lives dealing with junk mail.
• The average adult is on 50 mailing lists and receives 41 POUNDS of junk mail every year.
• We use 52 million trees and 25 billion gallons of water to produce one years worth of this country's junk mail.
• The average adult receives as much junk mail in one month as their grandparents did in a lifetime.

There is one critical step left in taming your paper piles: building the system of your dreams.

I would love to say that we have found one miracle system that works inside and out for every single client. But I can’t. We have found some very good thoughts on the subject though that work for the masses. Let’s start with the idea of the type of paper that we deal with daily. There are two main types: Active and Resting. 

Before anyone can make a decision about trimming paper from their lives, a few questions need to be answered.

What does it prove?

What is the reason for keeping it?

Is there a consequence if I don’t have it?

When was the last time I needed it?

Is this information still current?

Could I scan and keep electronically?

Before anyone can really understand what to get rid of, they have to have an idea of what they have. Completing a high-level sort helps anyone get a landslide of paper into more manageable chunks that can be much less intimidating and overwhelming.

Part of becoming organized is learning about your behaviors. It is much easier to try and work with your behaviors than against them.  There is a great book by Karen Jorgerst- If I Could Just Get Organized! Home Management Hope For Pilers and Filers. We completely agree with her thoughts on the two types of behaviors that people adopt in their lives--piling or filing.

Filers are the highly organized type. They have the neat and tidy underwear drawers, closets are color-coded, and canned goods are alphabetized. And- no that is not me! Pilers are … well,  pilers. They like nice flat surfaces perfect for wonderful, glorious piles. There is a third category that some of us fit into called messies. They are pilers attempting to be filers. They try to use systems that don’t work for their personality or behaviors. This leads to frustration and failure so they let the piles over run their lives.

Somewhere between the paper squirrel who saves everything “just in case” and the minimalist who tosses everything in the trash, is the organized person for whom keeping important paper is no big deal.  Becoming that organized person is not simple, but taking the steps necessary to get your household paper under control is a task with many rewards, first and foremost: a good night’s sleep.

Having an organized approach to household paper can remove much of the stress associated with living in an increasingly complicated world.  As children, parents, spouses, partners, investors, citizens, and employees, we play many roles, each with a trail of paper attached. In the next few blogs I want to talk a little bit about why paper drives us so crazy and what we can do to get it under control.  Although tempting, taking a lit match to your paper piles is NOT the best approach.