Paper clutter is, in my experience, the sneakiest kind of clutter. Clothes, you can see. Dishes pile up and you run out of bowls. But paper just… grows. Quietly. Until one day you realize you’re living with a roommate made entirely of old electric bills and coupons that expired in 2022. Ah, to avoid a lifetime of clutter: the paper pile problem. Don’t even get me started on gift cards to businesses that aren’t even in business anymore. There must be a future story about that.
When I set out to write this series of a Lifetime of Clutter, Not Doing This to My Kids – – sports equipment was the first thing I thought of because I walk by that area of my home pretty frequently and no one ever touches what’s there. Our sporting equipment area is truly just taking up space for the ‘maybe someday’, but the things people actually use – – the snowshoes, skis/snowboards and tennis racquets, are easily accessible in the mudroom. The golf clubs from my previous story, as well as the lacrosse sticks and all kinds of rollerblades and skates are in an easy-to-be-missed section of the basement. Sporting goods was kind of an easy category to start with because it’s very black and white as to whether we use them anymore. There’s always that worry of “what if…”, but I’m coming around, so if somebody asks me if I have any lacrosse equipment they could borrow, the answer will just have to be no. I need to keep telling myself that I don’t have to be ready to solve every problem.
My plan for this story was going to be the random containers and one-hit-wonder appliances in my kitchen pantry (you know, the mini-waffle-maker that’s not to be confused with the regular waffle maker, the quesadilla machine, the ice cream maker….), but then I lost an important piece of paper. I knew it was around here somewhere, and I didn’t put it exactly where it was supposed to go. There is a pile of paper on my kitchen counter that has been there long enough that I am now working around it, not through it. Around it. Like it’s furniture. So, in a time crunch, I wasted too much time looking for that missing document. That’s when I decided this month I will write about paper–the Paper Pile Problem.
When my youngest daughter started college in the fall of 2021, I purchased a device called reMarkable 2. Now 4 1/2 years later, I’m still using it daily. Many people see me using it, and are very curious. A reMarkable 2 is a paperless notebook. It’s not an iPad, it doesn’t light up, it doesn’t have apps, and it’s not backlit. It also can’t distract me by being able to access the Internet, check Facebook, or receive notifications. My reMarkable 2 created a game changing atmosphere for me because whether I’m preparing to go to meet buyers or sellers for strategy sessions and consultations, or I want to sketch ideas for a flower bed, or keep track of my Christmas list, shopping list–if it’s to be written down – – no longer is it done on a yellow lined notepad, or worse, the back of an envelope.
I had gotten to a point where I had yellow notepads everywhere, and of course they all look the same – – so I was spending more time looking for things than I was being productive. I got the reMarkable 2, it was mid-Covid, and we were seeing fewer people in person. Before that, every prospective client got a folder–buyers, sellers, referrals, SO many folders! Covid forced a lot of use of electronic signing platforms, like Dotloop and DocuSign, it also brought back the QR code, which is a very convenient way to share information with people.
If I’m meeting you at your house or my office to discuss listing your property for sale or to talk about your home search, I will arrive with paper, and plenty of it, so that you have all the information you need. Many people, myself included, prefer to read from paper. But as far as taking notes and being able to find them (the important part), reMarkable 2 for the win.
Being that it’s tax time and I was missing an important tax-related paper, I decided to empty out my work bag, any folders in my vehicle, and the dreaded laundry baskets of miscellaneous things that get put aside when you’re having company over – – always paperwork in there.
I don’t imagine anyone who has too much extra extraneous paperwork looks forward to going through it, so my plan for myself was to set up a table somewhere and just make myself do 15 or 20 minutes a day. If I have to set it up and put it away each time, I would never do this.
With three dogs, we’re constantly getting Chewy shipments, and have small cardboard boxes, exactly the size of printer paper, so that’s what I’m using to sort and dig myself out of the backlog. If you have access to office supplies, a basic set of in/out boxes can do the same. If you have a recycle center near you, you might find some there. There’s a whole office supply section at the recycle center I visit in West Boylston.
The key is to decide on something and give it a permanent home. Taxes are inevitable for some of us, and keeping receipts or at least keeping track of expenses is necessary. Because my office is fairly far from the kitchen, there’s always a pile on the counter that needs to be dealt with. This has resulted in several of those small Chewy boxes ending up in my office, needing to be sorted.
I’m just going to tell you what has been working for me, and it is repeatable, which is key. Because I now track my notes in my remarkable, I no longer create physical folders for everything. This has played out in a positive way in that as I came up with a way to attack all that paperwork, I realized there are two drawers in my filing cabinet that have not been opened in years. Getting started, needing to find that one missing piece of paper and with a desire to improve the first impression (for me) when I walk out to my office each morning, I hit the most recent piles. The problem with that is that they are recent papers, so often there are still action items related to each kept document or piece of mail.
Now some people would tell you not to not touch anything twice, but for me – – If I’m in a decluttering mood, it will slow down significantly if I start renewing my AAA membership, ordering new contacts, RSVPing to an event, etc. For me – – other than specific categories, like taxes and receipts, I have four action boxes – – SCAN AND SHRED because I now get my mortgage statement, my car payment, and our insurance bills by email, I’m not getting any new paper bills from those companies. However, I didn’t always get them electronically, so I want to keep anything that are foundational documents (like the full insurance policies).
I do want to make sure I have the last year’s history of bills, so they will go in my SCAN AND SHRED box. A quick aside here is the first three folders I pulled out of a file drawer are three vendors we haven’t used in YEARS. I have a high-speed scanner at my office, so that will help get me out of the hole (Verizon, DirectTV and Best Buy folders right to the fire pit), but going forward a simple printer/scanner will help me with the day-to-day. Where do I scan them to? I use Google Drive, but if anyone’s got a suggestion for something more local like how they save to an external hard drive, I could be convinced to not store them out there on the internet.
I also have a SCAN AND SAVE bin, TO FILE, and good old TO DO, TO DO ASAP and one that also has a label of @#$%^! TAXES. Going forward, I’m waiting for the day when the entire place feels ‘lighter’, where my practices take strong enough hold to become solid habits and I avoid a lifetime of clutter: the paper pile problem. *Although you can see here I haven’t finished going through those golf clubs yet.
Try these things along with me…
Junk Mail
Stand over the recycling bin when you get the mail, literally. Don’t bring the junk inside. The second it crosses the threshold it becomes your problem. The catalogs, the credit card offers, the junk mail — none of it needs to come in. (And if you’ve been meaning to unsubscribe from catalogs, catalogchoice.org is free and it actually works. You’re welcome.)
To Read Someday
The “someday reading” pile is a lie we tell ourselves. You know the one. The magazine article you tore out. The newsletter you printed. The thing you were definitely going to read when you had a quiet moment. I’m guilty of it, too, but that moment has come and gone, and if I’m not keeping up, or need to make good progress, anything that belongs in that pile must go. I now have a photo album on my phone of anything I might read later. If it’s longer than you want to read as a photo, get one of those Chewy boxes and put it on your bedside table and read one thing each night, and then recycle. Your future self will not miss it.
Manuals
Manuals. The manual for your rice cooker is on the internet. The manual for your 2009 vacuum cleaner is on the internet. I would bet actual money that whatever you have stuffed in that drawer, box or binder is on the internet. Recycle them all and never look back. That said, if you ever sell your home, your future buyer might appreciate a good old fashioned binder of your systems, mechanicals and appliances–so I’d recommend keeping those, nicely organized for you to leave with the house.
Guilt Paper
This takes the longest, and carries the most emotion. Tackle the “guilt paper” category separately, and with intention. This is the kids’ artwork, the birthday cards, the notes in someone’s handwriting who is no longer here. This pile deserves its own quiet afternoon — not a frantic purge. Pick the actual favorites. Photograph the rest. And then let yourself off the hook, because keeping every drawing your kid made in second grade isn’t honoring them, it’s just a lot of paper. AND–if you asked them, they’d be like “What! You actually kept all of that?” The next generation is funny like that.
We moved twice to get to where we are. You may have read about that in my story called Considering Multi-Generational Living, an In-law or Accessory Apartment?
https://jenshenk.com/considering-multi-generational-living-an-in-law-or-accessory-apartment/
Well, I’ll be damned in the first time that Max (Shenk 3, lives in California) came to visit after we moved in to our current home, and I showed him where I put all the older kids’ nostalgia stuff (another story in the making–TMNT, Ghost Busters, and soooo many Beanie Babies), he actually LAUGHED at me for having saved all of his youth sports trophies and awards. The kid who loved his trophies, and I thought I was doing him a favor, he laughed at me. You can only imagine if he came back and asked where the trophies were and my answer was that I threw them out. I can’t win (another story, but honestly there would be too much personal information in there).
Set Your Own Expiration Dates
Set expiration dates. Flyers, coupons, invitations — they have a natural lifespan. I’ve seen a suggestion that you should write a small date in the corner of anything time-sensitive the moment it comes in. When the date passes, it goes. No deliberating. I haven’t tried this–seems like just another step.
The Damn Backlog
The backlog is the hardest part — but you only have to do it once. Old statements, old bills, things you were “keeping just in case.” If you can access it online, you don’t need the paper. Go back to my 6 bins–SCAN AND SHRED, SCAN AND SAVE, TO FILE, TO DO, TO DO ASAP and @#$%^! TAXES.
Shred what’s sensitive, recycle the rest, and switch to paperless billing everywhere you can. It feels like a massive project, and honestly, it is. But you do it once and then paper stops accumulating the way it used to. I’m not going to tell you I have this all figured out. The pile on my kitchen counter is proof enough. But the pretty recycle bin in the mudroom is a start, and it’s rewarding to see what accumulates in there before ever making it in to the house proper. I’m working on it — and I’ll update when it actually feels lighter around here.
