Wow - I've been "retired" for a week already. Oh how time flies when you're having fun....
Looks like I've been having lots of fun because I haven't accomplished many of the items on my To Do list. One of the first things I had intended to do this week was to de-clutter and organize my house. It sure was easy to get distracted and lured into more interesting activities. But the chaos of the disorganization is really getting to me so a priority it must remain. (The good news is that I foresee a road trip to Cincy in my future to visit The Container Store and IKEA!) The key for me is to implement sustainable systems. Once I have a simple, effective system in place I'm usually pretty good at maintaining the order.
My greatest challenge seems to be dealing with the mail and other paper. I'm good at tossing the junk mail right off the bat. It's the rest of the stuff that I don't know what to do with. I end up with stacks of mail and then shuffle them around the coffee table. Then I have to go back a few days later and do it again. It's quite senseless really.
I think I'll try an accordion file to organize my bills -- one section to hold pending bills, one to hold pending charitable donation requests, and then sections for storing the paid bills (phone, electric, water, etc.). That should be simple enough.
But what about all of that mail that can't be acted on immediately -- invitations that contain information I may need later, postcards advertising upcoming arts events, and the like?. I'm learning that I'm very visual. I like to see what I'm doing and I like it to be "pretty". I'm thinking about a bulletin board large enough to hold those desk-sized calendar pages. Then I can pin the info / tickets / etc. to the appropriate days on the calendar. Or I could have clips or envelopes attached to the calendar that would hold all of those little goodies. Of course then I cannot see them without flipping through them, which might not satisfy my visual preferences. Hmmm. I'll have to keep thinking about this one.
My third issue with the mail is magazines and catalogs. I recently canceled an insane number of catalogs and some magazines too. But I couldn't bring myself let go of many magazines. I absolutely l-o-v-e love my home and garden type magazines. I love to look at the pictures and pull ideas for projects. The problem is that the magazines tend to stack up more quickly than I can get through them. Maybe I'll try a magazine file for each title to hold them until I get a chance to flip and pull. I could also incorporate a decorative file box to categorically organize the items I pull. Not only would that simplify some of the visual chaos but it would also make it much easier to find the resource articles and photos in the future.
So those are some of my initial ideas for taming the paper clutter with which I must learn to comfortably co-exist. The key for me will be implementing the systems to deal with the challenges going forward. I think I have some pretty good ideas to work with here. [Thank you, MRP, for helping me brainstorm these solutions!]
Surely I'm not the only one battling clutter issues. What are your greatest paper challenges? What are your favorite systems for keeping the paper under control? I look forward to learning from your successes!