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Some of the things Let Go of Clutter (hey, I need an amazon link kickback here) says about paper.
Difficulty
Paper is worse to go through than other clutter. (I knew this but wouldn't have been able to say why.) "Fear of regret is one thing," says author Harriet Schechter, "but fear of the IRS can be worse." Plus there's a lot of it in a small space. A shoebox worth of paper contains many times more decisions to make and, if there are receipts in there, more worry about what you have to keep, than a shoebox worth of just about any other stuff. Going through a foot-high stack of paper at four seconds apiece could take an hour or more. Pound for pound, foot for foot, paper is the densest kind of clutter.
Are my piles of paper serving a purpose? Something useful, like keeping my desk warm in winter? Heh, I just loved that question and so had to add it in here. It made me laugh. My desk is the coziest desk in Christendom. If I'm in something I could technically call Christendom. OK, it's the coziest desk west of someplace east of here.
Kinds of Piles
I LOVED this section. I knew all of this and couldn't, before reading this book, put it into words. There are five kinds of piles. I shall paraphrase, in an attempt to avoid blatant plagiary.
- Growing. You keep putting stuff on it: unopened mail, bills to pay, bills that you've paid...
- Stagnant. You shoved it in a box because someone was coming over.
- Diminishing. You're dealing with it! But you leave...
- Distilled. The stuff you really, truly don't know what to do with.
- Double-Distilled. An aggregate of multiple previously-sorted Distilled piles.
Holy moly have I ever had these kinds of piles of paper. Every single one of them. She nailed it. Right on the nose. I'm in awe.
A Distilled pile (or any papers lying around, I suppose) the author calls "Pile Germs": left unmolested, they grow into a pile of papers. I love it. Pile Germs. They breed, I tell you. These are all over my house. No wonder I'm swimming in a sea of paper. In this room alone I have nineteen file cabinet drawers (some of them actually used for filing... hmm, twelve) and I still have piles of homeless papers keeping my furniture warm in the winter.
Records vs. Resources
Papers are either records (of what you did, when, how much you paid for it, etc) or resources (information about what you MIGHT do someday, for example). Records are finite. Resources can drown you. Pitch more Resources. You can get most of those again.
She goes through some suggestions about how long you have to keep various kinds of records and how you could organize them. Me, I don't care (yet). Even if I keep them all, but pitch the business card of somebody I saw at a craft fair ten years ago and can't remember what he sold, I'll be doing so much better than I'm doing now...!
Managing it
There's project time (fighting a full-grown clutter monster) and maintenance time (not letting him get in your house in the first place). The more you pitch, the less of both you need to spend.
To keep control of your paper clutter, the author recommends three systems:
- Time management system: mainly so that you can allocate time for maintenance tasks
- Paper Flow: be efficient with your handling of stuff that comes in (eg: sort your mail next to a wastebasket)
- Filing system: a sensible way to keep the things you need to keep
She goes into detail on how to plan out a good, usable filing system. I think mine's OK so what she said didn't impact me much. One thing I hadn't thought of before is that all the files don't have to be in the same place. Consider putting them where you use them, even if that's a kitchen minifile with coupons and recipes and takeout menus and appliance instructions.
Wow, there's a lot about paper. More on next rock.
Difficulty
Paper is worse to go through than other clutter. (I knew this but wouldn't have been able to say why.) "Fear of regret is one thing," says author Harriet Schechter, "but fear of the IRS can be worse." Plus there's a lot of it in a small space. A shoebox worth of paper contains many times more decisions to make and, if there are receipts in there, more worry about what you have to keep, than a shoebox worth of just about any other stuff. Going through a foot-high stack of paper at four seconds apiece could take an hour or more. Pound for pound, foot for foot, paper is the densest kind of clutter.
Are my piles of paper serving a purpose? Something useful, like keeping my desk warm in winter? Heh, I just loved that question and so had to add it in here. It made me laugh. My desk is the coziest desk in Christendom. If I'm in something I could technically call Christendom. OK, it's the coziest desk west of someplace east of here.
Kinds of Piles
I LOVED this section. I knew all of this and couldn't, before reading this book, put it into words. There are five kinds of piles. I shall paraphrase, in an attempt to avoid blatant plagiary.
- Growing. You keep putting stuff on it: unopened mail, bills to pay, bills that you've paid...
- Stagnant. You shoved it in a box because someone was coming over.
- Diminishing. You're dealing with it! But you leave...
- Distilled. The stuff you really, truly don't know what to do with.
- Double-Distilled. An aggregate of multiple previously-sorted Distilled piles.
Holy moly have I ever had these kinds of piles of paper. Every single one of them. She nailed it. Right on the nose. I'm in awe.
A Distilled pile (or any papers lying around, I suppose) the author calls "Pile Germs": left unmolested, they grow into a pile of papers. I love it. Pile Germs. They breed, I tell you. These are all over my house. No wonder I'm swimming in a sea of paper. In this room alone I have nineteen file cabinet drawers (some of them actually used for filing... hmm, twelve) and I still have piles of homeless papers keeping my furniture warm in the winter.
Records vs. Resources
Papers are either records (of what you did, when, how much you paid for it, etc) or resources (information about what you MIGHT do someday, for example). Records are finite. Resources can drown you. Pitch more Resources. You can get most of those again.
She goes through some suggestions about how long you have to keep various kinds of records and how you could organize them. Me, I don't care (yet). Even if I keep them all, but pitch the business card of somebody I saw at a craft fair ten years ago and can't remember what he sold, I'll be doing so much better than I'm doing now...!
Managing it
There's project time (fighting a full-grown clutter monster) and maintenance time (not letting him get in your house in the first place). The more you pitch, the less of both you need to spend.
To keep control of your paper clutter, the author recommends three systems:
- Time management system: mainly so that you can allocate time for maintenance tasks
- Paper Flow: be efficient with your handling of stuff that comes in (eg: sort your mail next to a wastebasket)
- Filing system: a sensible way to keep the things you need to keep
She goes into detail on how to plan out a good, usable filing system. I think mine's OK so what she said didn't impact me much. One thing I hadn't thought of before is that all the files don't have to be in the same place. Consider putting them where you use them, even if that's a kitchen minifile with coupons and recipes and takeout menus and appliance instructions.
Wow, there's a lot about paper. More on next rock.
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You know, Rondo's birthday is next Saturday, and guess what he's requested as a present? An all-day cleaning session. He wants to thoroughly clean the house -- as in de-clutter. He envisions big bags of stuff leaving the house, either in garbage or in donations, he doesn't care.
Maybe I should get him this book too. :-D
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Especially if it's from a library, and thus will leave again. ;-) I'm thinking of getting my library a copy of this book. It's the kind of thing people will want to borrow instead of buy, and apparently few if any libraries around here have it yet.
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I don't have a problem with paper clutter, astonishingly -- I just seem not to generate a whole lot of paperwork, and I toss paper fearlessly (perhaps a little too fearlessly; I should shred more stuff, and I cannot necessarily tell you about my 1999 tax return). I have an adequate little drawer of file folders for the stuff that must be kept, including one manageable folder-o-sentimentality. Paper just doesn't scare me. It's not like those four boxes of Miscellaneous Stuff still sitting in the living room. I've decided I'm going to need to read the book before I can handle them.
My mom had an awful newspaper clutter problem. It's purely because of her that I won't get a local paper delivered; I'm interested enough to buy one at a box once or twice a week, but I've seen how they get out of control when they show up every single day.
The Kinds of Piles bit, though? That applies to my piles of STUFF. Argh.
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I too have seen someone with an awful newspaper clutter problem. I now have a twitch against even the
free paperlitter that gets delivered to our driveway every coupla days.no subject
:)
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However, I am completely and totally unable to build the magical links that associate me with the click. They're full of iframes and other malarkey. Why can't it just say [a href="CJRecommended-LetGoOfClutter"]Cool Book[/a]? Grr.
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Heh. I'm saving the top of the rolltop desk in the office for one of the later subprojects of The Decluttering Project. I think I have most of those pile types.
On records vs. resources, the latter are what I really eliminated in an earlier stage - cleaning the map file cabinets and condensing them down to one cabinet plus one banker's box. I collect maps, geography geek that I am, and I'd also amassed a huge collection of less valuable travel brochures and literature over the years, thinking I might go (back) here someday. Feh. Pitched all but a tiny bit, for places like National Parks and such that I have actual plans to visit. Three dead bodies worth of weight in black garbage bags. :-)
I think maintenance is still going to be more difficult. I seem to have a habit of getting lax and then having these cleaning sprees where I pitch tons of schtuff.
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Man, she's got that right.
My accountant won't let me throw one scrap of paper away regarding my taxes or student loan repayment. When it comes to paying the government, he says, it is always the citizen's job to prove lack of guilt and NOT the government's job toprove guilt. Anytime I get into a I Must Throw This Away mood, he tells me horror stories of a client he had who had to repay her six-figure student loan from Trendy Law School two times. In case I didn't believe him, he introduced me to his neighbor's daughter so she could give me the firsthand tale. EEEEEEeeeeeek! For the rest of my life, I cart around a file box filled with records of payments and tax records. When it gets full, I scan the works onto computer and burn it to CD (that's fine, the accountant said, but always keep the originals for the last few payments of a debt like a student loan or tax bill). Every five years, paranoid of oxidation betraying me to the IRS, I copy the CD.
EEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkkkkkkkkkkkk!
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Re:
Somehow she managed to live without too much clutter. She just kept everything neatly filed in boxes. She and Grandpa must've been whizzes at prompt organization.
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This decluttering book doesn't, but my other favorite decluttering book does, mention the thought that your next of kin will someday have to finish your decluttering job. Clearing out a beloved person's home is not easy at the best of times. :-(
When I went to my grandma's place, to help her through her last few days, I found a desk calendar from 1928. New in box. My grandma was a heckuva clutterer. Pounds of old papers, envelopes that came with some offer or other and despite the printing on them "might be useful", half a bicycle...
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My darling daughter has already pointed this out to me.
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damn good stuff. of course we know it already, but sometimes we need reminders. at least i do...
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What amazes me most about this book is the number of things she says that I already knew but didn't know I knew and couldn't have put into words. (And I have delusions that I can write! Sheesh.)
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