Shanathalas
"When the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around"

The Whole Paperwork thing.

By Shanathalas
Step 1: Find all your paperwork currently strewn through the house.
Step 2: Place on table.
Step 3: Sort paperwork.
Step 4: File paperwork away in file folder.

As usual, I'm halfway through step 3 and have completely run out of energy. I now fall back into this pattern:

Step 3a: file away the small amount of paperwork I've sorted.
Step 3b: push all the rest of the paper in a massive pile. Hide somewhere in the house.
Step 3c: Wait a month, attempt step 1 again.
 

4 comments so far.

  1. anna 9:15 PM
    As a former paperwork clutter bug I recommend not trying to attack ALL your paper work in the same day. I tended to have chunks of it lying around the house and it was usually quite doable to pick one of these bunches, work through that and then pat myself on the back and get back to playing computer games.

    Also! I totally recommend a label maker! It seems silly but I bought one and then used it to label piles of manila folders and then you know where to put stuff when you've sorted through it.
  2. Danzilla 4:21 AM
    My paperwork trick is to try to keep two piles: "Dealt with" and "Deal with". "Dealt with" is awaiting filing, and "Deal with" needs to be dealt with, and once dealt with, moves to the "Dealt with" pile. "Deal with" tends to spread over the kitchen table and nearby flat surfaces, and stuff doesn't always get moved to "Dealt With" in a timely manner. And once every six months or so I attack "Dealt with" and file the buggers.

    The next step is to figure out my policy on getting rid of stuff from teh filing cabinet. I sporadically declare "All Phone Bills From 2004 And Earlier Are Rubbish", but don't have a standard process for it.

    The otehr next step is to get more proactive about the Two Piles rule.
  3. Kass 1:17 PM
    I barely ever get to step 1, basically because the paperwork is all over the place and I can never seem to find it lol.
  4. vohumanu 5:35 PM
    I recommend the first thing you do is decide on some categories. e.g. Shopping, Bills, Study, etc. Then just go through the big pile and put it into smaller piles. File them and then tackle one of those piles at a time.

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