Reclaiming Your Space: Drowning in Paper

This is the Reclaiming Your Space post I’ve been stalling on. Because frankly, if there is one thing that I am terrible at it’s keeping paper organized.

And by paper I mean anything related to mail, bills, office stuff, and so on.

I don’t have an office. We have a space where we keep a filing cabinet and old paper work, but I don’t have a dedicated office. I use the main floor kitchen table or couch and coffee table.  Which means paper work ends up in a pile somewhere, or in a random box.  There’s papers and stationary in an organizer in my master bedroom closet, on the coffee table (which is where my note books and ‘to do’ papers are) and so on.  There’s no order or reason and I know I’m forgetting or losing things.

Sigh.

It’s not ideal, but from what I’m hearing, paperwork is a real struggle for many of us.  Is it because there’s just too much of it? Because we don’t have good systems in place?  To be honest, paperwork wasn’t my strength when I was working either. My office looked like a tornado went through it each day.

So how do we gt on top of the paper work? I turned once again to Heather from Smart Space Organizing for some tips:

I have an office outside the home or “world headquarters”,  as my husband likes to call it, a home office and yet my main office is the dining room table.  Why, with all the other space that I have do I use the dining room table? Because, we have an open concept home and it is in the hub of the home.

This happens to many people. Either the kitchen table or the dining room table is used for homework, family management, mail, eating, games, crafts and as a home office. So why fight what works.  You can use a portable file box for your papers and supplies.

Or use a drawer for office and homework supplies.  Create a home for the items that you use in this space. You may want to add a bookcase with bins for some of the supplies.  You can find space but looking at the items that are currently stored in that space and of those what you are not using on a weekly or monthly basis and move those items to a new location.

Paper work is my nemesis.  Try to handle incoming and produced paper work on a daily basis. Filing what you NEED to file may take around 15 minutes. Shredding and recycling other paper. I keep my printer unplugged until I really need to print a document so I sort of eliminate the extra paper produced that needs to be filed. Did I tell you that I don’t like paperwork? Make filing easy, colour code and group by subject. Find what works for you.

Don’t forget to do regular backups for your digital files and label flash drives.

–Heather Burke, Smart Space Organizing

Filing is my biggest issue. I need to

a) create a home for my existing paperwork, the stuff that needs attention right away

b) a place to file work that has been completed

c) make the time to file and find a home for everything each day, rather than letting it pile up

With tax season around the corner, I also need to start keeping my receipts better.  Last year I bought a small folder to put them all in, and that worked pretty well. But you know the one place where most get shoved? In my purse and wallet. Each week I should empty it and file it accordingly.

Yes, this seems like a lot of work all of a sudden, but why do I feel like if I just did a few minutes each day like Heather suggests it wouldn’t seem like such a mountain to climb?

How do you organize paperwork? Any tips or tricks or are you in the same boat as me?

Here’s some paper filing inspiration from Pinterest to help motivate us! (and Heather has a lot of boards dedicated to organizing on her Pinterest page!)

1- This is a great idea for a family area, kitchen, closet etc. To file and keep things organized

2- Pretty clipboards to file and visually display things that need to be done is a smart idea

3- An ottoman that doubles as file storage might be just what I need

4- This would be awesome