It seems like I have worked on paper clutter my entire life.  First it was High School, then College, and then The Workforce.

Some jobs require lots of paperwork.  I happened to be in one of them.  I was in outside sales for a pager company as my first job and if you didn’t cross your T’s and dot those i’s, there was a chance you didn’t get paid for everything.

Now I don’t know what it is like out there now.  When I was working, it was in the 80’s and early 90’s until I got sick.  Computers in the work place were just getting started and I also remember when fax machines came into the mix.

I did have a couple of businesses during this time that also required paperwork.  I guess you could say I was swimming in it.  Each company I worked for had manuals to be saved.  The one job I had was a District Sales Manager for a Fortune 500 company that’s business was payroll.  I had the downtown area which meant I dealt with Oil Companies and many Law Firms.  I wasn’t limited to other accounts.  Blockbuster was one of them when you could actually rent a movie and Hooters when they were just a two restaurant business.

These corporations I worked for would send you to training seminars and more paperwork would come your way.  So as you can see, paper clutter has been a very big part of my life.

So how did I find a way to sort through all of it without losing valuable information?  At first, I KEPT IT ALL!!!!  Sound familiar?  I thought so.  All I had to do is buy another filing cabinet.  At one time I had 4 large filing cabinets full of files. I just couldn’t bring myself to buying another one.  There were other things I wanted.  When I was in the midst of this there were no home computers. They were just getting started in companies.

Time marches on and by the end of the 90’s and beginning of 2000, I was in the process of filing for Disability.  Talk about paperwork there!  I was definitely in the deep end of the swimming pool!

How I Began To Work My Way Out Of The Deep End Of Paper Clutter

I knew I was going to have to have a way to do this.  I had not been diagnosed as being ADD until 1996 and that is where all my exhaustion began trying to concentrate and coordinate with a short term memory span.  This led me to car accidents and pneumonia and even being bitten by a brown recluse spider.  All this led up to my Fibromyalgia that I was diagnosed in 1989 when no one heard of it.

As I was filing for Disability with paperwork for that and from previous jobs, how was I going to do this?  You see non of the organizational books made any sense to me.  They were all written for non ADD people.  All I did was get frustrated.

Because of my short term memory span and all the paperwork I had, I was going to have to find a way that would work for me.  So this is what I came up with.  Two sizes of garbage bags, labels, sharpie pen markers, twisties and big plastic tub chests.  Since then I moved down to tubs and now into banker boxes and rid myself of two filing cabinets.  When I think of all the time I spent organizing and it still wasn’t working I just had to do it my way.  Of course we didn’t even have paper shredders then.

In 1993 through 1998 I lived in a rather large house so I had plenty of storage.  Then I had to downsize into a home with one clothes closet and another regular but small closet.  This is where I live today.  It was wall to wall full of paperwork and other things as I was involved in sewing and crafts and with that comes more clutter.

There was also lots of work to be done on this old house.  I was just happy to have a roof over my head.  Do It Yourself Projects led to more clutter.

I would have piles of paper clutter all over the house along with the remodeling.  It was one big mess.  So what I would do is dump everything that was on my dining room table or on a countertop or on my bed, throw the the stuff into a garbage bag and label it.  Then I would put it into this big tub with hinges.  So if there was something I needed I would go to the large tub and by the way I labeled things I was able to find it.

Then I spent a good 5 years of being very sick and this was around the time I found Flylady in 2005.  I was down to 115 pounds on a 5’7″ frame.  I never realized it but some how because I had all this paper clutter plus I didn’t realize I was telling myself unconsciously that I just wanted to disappear.  Without further ado, I took some pictures to show you how I have worked my way out of paper clutter and by the end of this year,  I only want paper that needs to be here.  All else will be thrown out on a daily basis.

Under the plastic bags were these.

It is empty.  Now is the perfect time to repurpose my extra tiles leftover from the Living Room!

Nice and clean! I want to make better use of this drawer.  Stays empty for  now.

This the bag that was in the drawer.  That is 4 years.  Today I consider the drawer prime space.

It is going into a banks box for time being.

I have some bankers boxes that are temporary home for the paper clutter as I go through it. I use Painters Tape to mark it so the box can be reused.

I pulled everything out of the bag so you can see how I use smaller bags to put in the kitchen bag and wouldn’t you know but there is Kevin Costner!  I thought it was so appropriate for paper clutter because many times fear will hold us back.  And for me it is always nice to look at Kevin.  Yes, I have some magazines with him on the cover I am not getting rid of!

Notice what I wrote on the labels.  Stuff on Kitchen Cabinet east side.  Go through in a day or 2. Just want to get rid of the clutter so I can think!!!  Notice I went through it again 3 months later.  Then somehow got thrown into the 2008-09 bag.

This is some of the other loose stuff in the bag.  There are things I see I can easily throw away and will go through it and tossing.

I hope what I have shown you will get you psyched up for October’s Monthly Habit  “Paper Clutter.”  Yes, it is hard to get started no matter how much you have accumulated and I am winding down on this and hope that this will be the last October I will be dealing with this type of paper clutter from a while ago.  Instead it will just be things that accumulate through the current year and remove what is no longer important.  That is my goal.  If not, I will be here again next year with you working on “The Greatest Paper Clutter Eliminator Game!”

Keep Getting Rid Of Paper Clutter and Keep FLYing!
Marilyn

Now I am going to eat some pizza and relax!