Designing Life: filing

I decided to follow Lisa Woodruff's Organize 365 Whole House Challenge. This week she is encouraging those following the challenge to clean up "kitchen paper." Since I am both a challenge follower, organizer, and a blogger, I felt like elaborating! What does kitchen paper mean to me and to you?

Organizing Kitchen Paper Clutter

First of all, your kitchen clutter may not be her kitchen clutter. She encourages families to maintain a command central in the kitchen. This means all of the paper entering your house would go to your kitchen command center. This also means that when she tells you to tackle your kitchen papers, she is telling you to go to the place where your paper gathers and to start there.

Where does your paper collect?Do you have a family command central for paper, bills, and calendars?

My paper used to gather in the kitchen, then it would begin to gather on my dining room table, then it would begin to gather on my desk, and it might even have gathered into my living room. What a mess, right? We let papers collect and gain control of our homes. Enough is enough.

This is why Lisa Woodruff suggests picking the kitchen as your paper station. If your kitchen is large enough to keep a family command center to house the bills, papers, coupons, advertisements, and to do list components, then set apart a portion of your kitchen for this use. If your kitchen is too small, then you may consider having an entry way table committed to this use or a family desk for a command center.

Decide where the papers of your home will be met head on and organized.

The "Saturday" Basket

Alright, so Lisa calls her basket a "Sunday" basket, but I choose to do my organizing on Saturday. Therefore, my basket is called the Saturday basket. What is a Saturday basket, you might ask? It is your incoming paper zone. Everything that you need to address at some point will come into your house and into this basket. Immediate mail needs will be taken care of immediately. The basket will be gone through once a week, you pick the day.

On Saturday, I grab my basket and I begin to go through the mail, advertisements, coupons, new store rewards cards. I'll tell you what to do with those items in just a second.

First Step for First Timers

If you do not have a ground zero aka family command central, you can still get started on this part of the 40 week project. Lisa suggests putting all of your papers into one big laundry basket. Pull it all together in one place, then conquer it.

Here are my suggestions for sorting through the laundry basket of papers:

Take one blank piece of paper.
Write your priorities down from top to bottom.
My list is something like this:

God
Personal Health
Husband
Child
Home
Family and Friends
Work
Ministry
Hobbies

This is how I file my working (current) papers.

I make hanging folders labeled with my priorities.

I make folders inside of each hanging folder with subset categories.

Example:

Under Home I have a folder labeled house cleaning, one labeled menu planning, and one labelled home organization

You can then group your papers into these categories. If the piece of paper doesn't belong in any of your priority categories, then it probably doesn't need to be in your active life. You can make a separate pile of papers that need to be filed in permanent storage.

Master To Do List

As you begin to group your papers, grab a notebook or legal pad. Think about it, you kept these papers for a reason, but has that reason ever been met? You need to add papers to your to do list. You may have kept the Shakespearean play calendar, because you really wanted to go to a play. Add it to the to do list under "husband" for a date night. Maybe you kept a set of coupons and have been meaning to use them. Add it to your home to do list and to your menu planner.

Your master to do list can be a very amazing resource. However, be realistic. This is not your life on paper. This is what might happen in an ideal world. Take a breath and you will weekly make a plausible to do list. Lisa intends to get three home items done a day and three work items done a day. In her life she realized she can realistically do no more. In my life, I can realistically get one item done a day. GREAT! Then at least I'm closer to my own goals for an organized life and doing the things on my to do list that I put on that list.

The Clip

Lisa at Organize 365 also talks about her "one" clip that she uses to keep coupons, kid's papers, outgoing mail, etc. in line on her refrigerator. I just bought my clips recently and since we are a homeschool family, I don't seem to be using it for kid's papers yet. I'll have to see how they get used in the future.

The Gist

I mentioned in my last post (which was about 6 months ago) that you will have temporary files, working (current) files, and permanent files.

The Temporary Files go in your Saturday Basket.
The Working Files are filed in an easily accessed file tote.
The Permanent Files are kept in a filing cabinet or set of plastic filing bins.

All your temporary files will become a part of your to do list and become a part of your working files, be thrown away, or will be filed in your permanent files.

Any questions? I'd be happy to answer questions and you can also join Lisa Woodruff's Organize 365 Facebook group page listed on her website. Enjoy!!!

Brooke

Owner and Designer of Designing Life Etsy Shop
and Designing Life Local

Getting Household Papers Organized

Today, I shifted my attention from my kitchen to my living room. My living room is the space in which we spend most of our day . . . when we aren't cooking or eating. Our television, computer, desks, bookshelves, video games, and one wonderfully ancient denim sofa are in our living room. We also enter our home into our living room.

Before I could do anything with the room, I had to start with the papers.... I had papers collecting on top of my printer, papers on my desk, papers on my computer desk, papers on the coffee table . . . papers pretty much everywhere. They were about to form a paper monster and eat me alive. They had to be conquered.

The Paper Monster

I figured out that I was dealing with my own paper monster.

Neat Paper Monster

While I love checking out Neat's amazing paper scanners, I have a lot of papers that I want to keep on hand. I have a set of working files, but not all of the working files were working. Here is how you can separate your files into three groups.

Permanent Files

Working Files

Weekly Files

Permanent Files

The Permanent Files are in my filing cabinet upstairs. Our finances are filed according to Ric Edelman's guide. I have the rest according to what our papers can be grouped into easily. Each person/couple will have a different set of file labels. I have a home business, others will have files on their careers. I have a file for homeschool records, many others will have a file for each year of school their child goes through. Your permanent files are files that you need to have, but do not need to access frequently. Perhaps once a year or less.

Working Files

Working Files are files that you need to access more frequently. They may pertain to a project that you are working on. Bills that need to be paid monthly. You might keep your address book pages in this box/cabinet. You want them nearby, but you don't need to get at them all the time. These should be labeled clearly and have useable information inside. If you have your bills inside, you need to include a printable tracker that helps you to know when your bills need to be paid and where you can record when you paid the bill. If you have yearly goals, you may want to keep a file on your goals and review them monthly to stay on track. Working files need to be workable.

Weekly Files

Weekly Files are those files that you will access every week and contain papers that you will use continually. You need these papers filed and labeled so that you are able to wrap your mind around your tasks. Without Weekly Files you accumulate papers and add more papers to the papers that are out . . . "because you are working on them." Even papers that are a part of weekly planning need a job.

This is where my "Working Files" were failing. I had my Permanent Files and Working Files, but I didn't have Weekly Files. I just made a pile of all the papers that I was currently working on. Then I added more papers to my pile that still needed to be worked on, then more papers on top of that, until I forgot what was underneath the pile. I was overwhelmed by feelings of fear due to this paper monster. Let me explain . . .

The Fear of 'Things Left Undone'

"The papers in my house began to scare me. However, I have come to realize that it isn't the need to organize the papers that evokes my panic, but the fear that I might discover things left undone, items on my to do list that I never finished, or even worse, people that I've disappointed by not following through.

As I go through my papers and remember tasks that became forgotten, I have to give myself grace. I don't remember every task every time. I don't follow through with everything that I commit to with the best intentions. I will hope to do better next time, but today . . . I just really need these papers to get organized."

Have you discovered box file folders? They hold more files helping you organize.

Taming the Paper Monster

I have all of my files separated out, filed, and for the most part put away. I've made a huge step in taming my paper monster. I still need to go through my labels, add a few more files (such as one for to do lists), but I have a great start. Organization doesn't really have an end. You keep organizing and reorganizing your life because life never stops changing and we never stop growing. Take a look through your papers and see if you can't figure out a better system of paper control for your home.