Paper clutter is evil, and my house has a bad habit of breeding it. Oddly enough, it doesn't look bad this week, only because I moved the "newest" box of paper down to the basement a few weeks ago. Sadly, I'm not touching it this week. I'll do that when I get to the basement. I'm pretty sure the basement will be our major cleaning project of the summer. So, while it was a bit of a *facepalm* "oh crap" after seeing where this week's project was, I was actually glad, and faced it happily.
So this is where the bulk of my paper clutter begins. It's a shelving unit that we keep relatively bare since the kids still like to get into things on shelves. But as you see, it also seems to be the junk mail pile.
The very top is bad too- Lilia's art projects from school get a place of "honor" up here. I also have the top of my drawers in the bedroom, but I oddly didn't take a picture. I thought I did.
I didn't really do much. My biggest problem is I never want to throw anything away, as I get this "What if that was important?" thought in my head. Even when I know it's not. So what always happens is I keep it...sometimes for years, and then throw it out in one big clean. Which is sort of what I did today. I say sort of, because I did try to organize, and make it easier for me to keep it clean. If anything I just need to remember to throw stuff away right away...
The first thing was to clean this all out. I sorted everything- recycles, John, junk and keep. I'd say 85% was junk, or something to be recycled. We don't have a bin- Herkimer doesn't have bins, which I have to say is really lame. They take recyclables...in plastic bags. I mean, what the hell! Isn't the biggest waste of plastic bags you've ever seen?
So after that, I sorted the keeps into this little filing box. I used to do this ages ago, and stopped. It's been sitting around, keeping the stuff from 2006 - 2008 organized. So I ended up throwing out most of that, and reorganizing the stuff in it for this year. It didn't take too long, and hopefully...I didn't throw out anything we needed. I gave John his pile, which he nicely went through for me. I put a small box out for the "need to take care of" stuff, though at some point, I want to order something like this. And I'm putting Lilia's art downstairs, and at some point, when it has a "playroom" area, I will hang it up. Not all of it, but a few bits that I really like.
I think I will stop at Lowe's this weekend, and grab one of the generic recycling bins. I don't know if Herkimer will take these, but it would be good to place one right there next to my mail slot. Junk goes in, easy peasy! I didn't throw away any of the piles of newspapers I have, but that's because those are going to be used in my garden this year. Which I hope to work on soon. A good chunk of the snow in my back yard has melted, though not all of it. Soon!
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