Paper Clutter – Project: Simplify

Week Two of Project: Simplify

This week’s hot spot was a pretty boring one for me in that, well, paper clutter is not an area of weakness in our household. Has it been in the past? Sure, but right now we pretty much need the paper we have and it all has a home. Still, I committed to the project so here we go.

We have 3 areas where paper clutter accumulate: my dresser in our bedroom, a corner on the kitchen counter and the top of the printer in the office area/bonus room. The dresser is cleared off so there was nothing to declutter there and the spot in the kitchen only has some papers related to an item of business we need to attend to. No reason to file it away as I would just have to take it right back out. I normally leave the items that we need to take care of in that area because it is an area we are always seeing so it is a constant reminder to take care of stuff. Once the item is taken care of, we dispose of it. The only area where I had any paper clutter was on the printer. It was all things that needed to be filed. So I took all of 2 minutes to file them away.

Before
After

 

Since I felt like I should do SOMETHING for this challenge, I decided to purge my files. I knew it had been awhile since I’d done this so I figured it was probably a good, appropriate way to complete this challenge. (She mentioned books but I just redid my book shelf last month.)

I went through each of my files and took out what we no longer needed. I filled up a grocery bag full of stuff. It didn’t take me too long (except for the fact I wasn’t able to just sit down in one sitting and do it because of needing to attend to children) and it felt good to get rid of those things that weren’t needed. If it wasn’t for this project, there is no way I would have taken out the time to do this because it never really feels like it HAS to be done.

Before
After

 

What about the rest of you? Is paper overtaking your home? A great way to manage paper clutter is by using FlyLady’s 2 minute hot spot clean up. It’s just what it sounds like – set a timer for 2 minutes and go to town on that paper clutter! No guilt when the timer goes off. Two minutes is a totally manageable amount of time to dedicate to it and you’ll chip away at that stack much more quickly than you thought you could, promise! This is what I do when a mountain of paper starts to overwhelm me.

Tell me how you did this week in the comments and I’ll come check out your post!

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