5 Aug 2020

New Blog Series: Paperwork Organization

by | posted in: Around the House, Finances & Paperwork, Simplifying | 2

paperwork_featurePaperwork.  Everyone has it.  Everyone hates it.  Am I right?  ...I actually don't mind it so much.  My hubby would say that's because I'm kind of a nerd (yes, that's true), but really because I've taken the time to get rid of 99% of the papers in our house so I have very little left to manage.  Yup.  You heard me right, the majority of the paper is gone.  In this blog series, I will explain how we got rid of all that paper, what we eliminated, what we kept, what we digitized, and how we store it all.  Everything from bills to mail, kids drawings to old college essays.  I'll tell you how we eliminated the paper clutter and how we maintain it.  You can do it too, I promise!

 

WHERE DO WE BEGIN?

Well, I'm guessing if you're like most of us, you have the following somewhere in your house: unopened mail, bills to pay, bank statements, wads of junk mail, kids' schoolwork and art projects, a pile of business cards, notebooks, to do lists on scraps of paper, receipts, instruction manuals, old photos or scrapbooks, old notes from college classes, or old papers you wrote in high school!  If you're sentimental like me, you held onto a lot of paper items thinking you'd reminisce one day.  Funny thing, I've been paper-free for so long now, I can't even remember what kind of paperwork people have!

And I'm also guessing that if you have paper, you've got it in all nooks and crannies of your house.  Piled on the kitchen counter, on a desk, in a junk drawer in the kitchen, on the fridge, on a bulletin board, in your purse, in all sorts of drawers and baskets in your kids' rooms or playroom, in a shoe box, on a shelf, as bookmarks in your books, in file folders in a file cabinet, in file folders not in a file cabinet.  The places we can stuff paperwork are endless.  I'll work on tackling a pile of papers, only to sort the papers in to several piles of papers, then I will run out of time to tackle the papers, so I pile them all back up again for the next time I try to tackle the pile.  Sound familiar?

 

ABOUT THIS SERIES...

In this multi-post series, I want to share A LOT I've learned about managing the paper clutter.  Some of the topics I want to cover in this series are:

-What papers to keep, and what to toss
-How to digitize paperwork and how to store it on the computer
-How to manage paperwork as it enters your house so it doesn't become a mess
-How to create a home management binder for your family to store important "keep" papers
-How to create a babysitter binder and why you should have one
-How to organize photos & how to create a routine for backing up your photos as you take them
-How to digitize photographs, albums, mementoes, and home videos
-Why you need to create a "Last Things" letter for your loved ones when you pass away & how to do that
-Which online backup option you should to choose for your files
-How to create a medical history document for your family
-How to help you rethink keepsakes (what to keep, how to let go, how to prioritize, how to digitize your family's memories)
-And how to create keepsake boxes for your children for those important physical mementoes you want to keep

If you have any paperwork problems you'd like me to address, feel free to comment below and let me know!!!  I can add that to my list of things to address!

Alright.  Sound like a plan?  Great!  Stay tuned for more in my Paperwork Organization series!

2 Responses

  1. Patrycia
    | Reply

    Thanks, Sarah!!
    Paper is my biggest clutter. I went through a deep purge about 4 years ago…quite sentimental, but it was time to get rid of all those birthday cards I’ve been keeping 😀 Looking forward to all the posts!

  2. Sarah
    | Reply

    Haha, that sounds familiar! Birthday cards aplenty! With my own kids, I’m finding I have to just chuck them before I think too much about it…or they will have a box full by the time they move out! And what will they do with those??? (I’ve kept some, let’s be honest!)

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