Allison Cafe

Someone once said that a cluttered desk leads to a cluttered mind. While I have always been one of those people to make piles and function well in that environment, it has gotten to a point in which our home office just makes me feel anxious with all its clutter.

I have made it my mission this week to become better organized.

Making a plan

First, I will tackle the paper. With a productive, yet costly, trip to the Container Store and Big Lots, I returned to our home office equipped to whip our paper lives into shape. I am realizing as I sift through years of filed bank statements, pay stubs, photos, receipts and a lot of other paper that we seem to “need”, I am beginning to feel lighter with every bag of paper I recycle. Why do we hold onto so many useless pieces of paper? Sure, some of it we really may need someday, such as tax related documents from the last 7 years. But other pieces of paper, like every pay stub I have ever received, just seem unnecessary.

The funny thing is, that no matter how good it feels to become organized in our paper worlds, the draw just isn’t quite strong enough to get us to take action. So, with a pot of coffee brewed and a determination to get our world uncluttered, I have started the process.

What I have found is that this is not a one afternoon task, just like training for a road race, you have to dedicate time each day and set a goal for that day. This way the task isn’t overwhelming and we can finish the day with a sense of accomplishment. So here is my plan of attack.

Day 1: Make a plan. Purchased a new filing system from the Container Store and document folders and photo organization boxes from Big Lots. Returned home to stand excited over my new purchases and envision our new organized lifestyle.

Day 2: Time for a clean sweep. Woke up and emptied the contents of our closet into our office. I placed all the photo albums into plastic bins and looked at the sea of papers once confined to an entire side of our spare closet and decided that even the world wasn’t built in one day, it can wait until tomorrow.

Day 3: Overwhelmed at where to start. But it is time to take action. I separated all the files into relevant piles all across our living room floor. I divided the piles into:

Hayley helps us get organized

• Financial statements from the past 2 years and any older ones that involved stock purchases or pertinent account information
• Automobile related papers such as service records and important documents related to the car’s purchase
• Tax documents from the past 7 years, but went through them to organize them by year and unfold pieces of paper so as to take up less room
• Important documents such as legal documents, medical records, receipts for large purchases, baptism certificates, passport copies etc
• Manuals for electronics and kitchen appliances – ones we still own! All others are sent to the recycle pile
• A shred pile (always shred papers with personal information on them)
• A recycle pile

As I threw the paper to be recycled into our recycle bin, I felt a huge relief. The clutter that we keep in our lives doesn’t just occupy our physical space, it clutters our minds.

I’m not done yet, but I have made serious dent in the process of organizing our lives. The next step will be arranging the office for optimal productivity, selling some items, donating some items, and making a schedule for keeping our paper lives organized. So stay tuned for the before and after!

Let me know when you're done

Already I am starting to feel excited about what it will feel like to look upon our home office as a place which fosters creativity and organization and not feelings of frustration and guilt from all the clutter. Plus, now when we are looking for important papers, we will know where to find them!

I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.  — Pearl S. Buck

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