Hey everyone! Steph here... former secret
slob. So I am reaching the end of 'All Request October' where I have been doing
all the video requests that you have been sending in, or at least trying to
get to as many of them as possible! And today I am going to tackle a huge one
for not only myself but also one that has been requested a ton and that is how
to deal with paper clutter. So I am a former Secret Slob. I'm gonna just
coming out of it. A little bit of a secret slob still and one of the biggest
things that is overwhelming me in my life or has in the past is paper clutter!
You could stop buying things today never bring another thing into your house and
somehow paper would still find its way in here.
Whether it's bills or kids artwork or just things your kids bring home or
things you bring home or whatever. Paper can just be totally overwhelming! So I'm
going to use today's video to deal with my paper clutter.
I have decluttered it before in the past but never really established a solid
system for my paper and that is what I'm going to do today. So I hope that if you
are having problems or just feeling overwhelmed with paper in your life and
just stuff is kind of everywhere you'll take a couple minutes and try to make an
improvement with me. You don't have to use the system I'm going to use... find the
system that works best for you. I don't even know if my system is the best one
for me, but quite frankly, any system is going to be better than the system of
papers everywhere that we currently use. So first things first, I'm gonna gather
up all the papers in my house that are just driving me crazy and this includes
the ones that I have hidden away in drawers that I pretend are not even
there. So I'm going to grab all my papers now. Okay so this is my paper clutter
from my house and like I said, I have decluttered before,
but I've never gotten into these old files that have been sitting in our
basement for years. I don't even honestly know what's in
them which makes it probably pretty likely we don't need them. Two rules
before I get started: these are my decluttering rules for everything. #1 - do not declutter other people's stuff. So if you are married like I am or
you have roommates or whatever just get them involved with you if you're
decluttering paper, especially because it's hard to know what's important. Rule
#2 - don't take out more than you have time to put away. So my kids are
sleeping I have a solid two hours... I think this is only gonna take me 40
minutes, maybe half an hour. And I plan on being ruthless. So I think this
is manageable. If you have just like a crazy pile start
with one little thing, start with 15 minutes on the time,r do it a little bit
every day, whatever. Work through your pile, just don't pull it all out.
Especially if you're gonna put it in the kitchen or something like this and then
it's taking up your space you need to cook. Don't do that, just take out a
little at a time if you do not have time to put it away. So those are my two rules.
So the next thing you want to do is have a plan. Your paperwork can be divided
into a few categories. You might have more, you might have less but for me it's
going to be: documents I need right away within the month,
documents I need to save you know for a year or long-term, very important
documents so health documents passports travel things like that, and then -my
favorite- things to be recycled shredded and thrown in the garbage! And
that is probably going to be the majority of your stuff because a lot of
us are hanging onto stuff just in case, and you don't need to do that. Almost
everything is online now including old bills so there's no reason to keep that
stuff. Let's just get rid of it. So I'm gonna start going through my stuff, being
ruthless throwing stuff away and yeah we'll see what we
find. Because like I say, I don't know what half this is. Okay, so one thing I'm
getting rid of a lot of here and there's like folders and folders of bank
statements, I don't know why I've been keeping these. They were mailed to me
every month before I went totally digital. So this is my stack of old bank
statements so far. It's all online, I don't need to keep them. I did keep my
one that has my mortgage on it for the house that I bought before I was married
but otherwise I don't need to keep these, they are going in the garbage that is
already a big stack right here. Okay the other thing that I'm finding is same as
the old bank statements - old bills like these are our old medical services plan
bills. In Canada we pay I think $150 for my entire family a
month for all of our medical stuff. We're very lucky to live in Canada and have
that, but I don't know why I'm keeping these. This looks like these months have
passed...this one's from 2013. I don't need that I don't need a record that I paid.
I've obviously used the hospital, I've had two and a half babies, so yeah, no need to
keep that, that's going in the garbage. So if you have old bills, stuff you don't
need to keep, and you don't know why you're keeping it just get rid of it.
Okay so as I'm going through I found a perfect example of something that you
need to keep long term but not too long term and these are our house house
insurance packages. So this one's from 2017 and this one's from 2018. These
aren't even valid anymore so there's really no point in keeping them, so I'm
going to get rid of these. They're probably on file there anyways. Then we
have the current one here for 2019/2020 and so yeah some things you need
to keep long-term but not forever. So I think from here forward I'll try, like
when I put a new one in, to pull the old one out and just get rid of it.
So a couple other things you might want to keep for a little while but not
forever is receipts. This is a receipt for a lawnmower that we bought six years
ago. We don't need it anymore and on that note I also found a receipt from 1997 so
22 years ago for a stereo that my husband bought for himself when he was
like a teenager - that went in the garbage! I don't even have to ask him if he wants
to keep that, it's just, ya, receipts. Often we keep receipts for big-ticket items so
just go through get rid of the ones that obviously have no purpose anymore. we're
keeping our lawnmower, we've had it for six years
it works great. All right, so I basically have gone through all of our like formal
paperwork stuff. This is stuff we need to keep and organize, this is stuff
that we use currently on a month-to-month basis that we have to
file every month and then deal with at the end of the year. This is garbage and then
back there are a couple of files that I just need my husband to look at and do. But look at all these empty folders that have like one or two things in them
or nothing in them. I got this thing emptied out. I'm like obviously
I've been trying to organize this... for years. So the last thing in our house
that's a new item for us is children's artwork and as you can see I have very
prolific artists in my house. So a few months ago I figured out a way that I
was going to deal with children's artwork. The first way that I deal with
it is by just sorting through and choosing the things that are, you know,
worth keeping. (my daughter's three) and the things that are just scribbles. So
it's pretty easy to figure out what's a special item for me and you might have
stricter standards and you might not. But I already went through this pile earlier
I just wanted to keep it all the straight. Like, my kids
make a lot of stuff. This is just practice stuff for them and I picked out two little things here. So what I have
is a little folder that I keep in the command center so every day when
she comes home from preschool I look at what she's made and sometimes you know
it's something really nice and something that she's worked really hard on, like
for example here's a picture she drew of our family, it's, you know it's scribbly, but
this is what she drew when she was three. And sometimes it's like this, you know, I
don't need to keep. So everything that I feel like is worthwhile keeping
or something she's worked a little bit harder on I put in this little folder. So
I'm going to put these in here and then they're basically chronological from the
back to the front oldest to newest. And then what I've been doing is I started
this scrapbook and I've been stapling her stuff into this scrapbook - the stuff
that I really like - and then I'll label at the front so I'll write her name and
her age and then you know as she gets older I'll get more and more scrapbooks.
um this was kind of inspired by something that I had when I was a child
and I just really like it because you can look through it like a book as
opposed to just a stack of papers. You can see this is just the
stuff produced in the last week and this is this stuff from like the last
four months that I've chosen to keep. So I'm really particular about what I keep
and it's just mostly stuff that's just scribbles or you know random coloring
pages, we don't have to keep everything. So this is how I'm keeping it and then I'm
gonna sit down every once in a while and put it all in this scrapbook and then
she'll have that. I'll have to start a new one for my second daughter soon
because she's starting to get into the arts and stuff like that but for now
it's just the oldest one. And yeah so this is the end of my organizing. Here is
my pile of garbage, well I'm going to get it shredded, my husband has a shredder at work. and here is our new
file folder. So this is my stuff all organized. It feels so good! Alright, so
that is the end of me tackling the crazy paperwork in my house.
It's not that bad. I've been working on decluttering for the past year but that
was a bunch of stuff that had been sitting downstairs in a file cabinet and
I had just been avoiding and even just tossing papers in. So I'm sure you have a
place or a drawer where you just kind of shove papers, you don't know if they're
important maybe they are. So my final result: here is my garbage to be
recycled, here is my new filing bin with you know not that much stuff, a couple
sentimental things and then stuff my husband to go through. So remember do not
declutter other people's stuff especially paperwork, you don't know
what's important to them. So I mean it's pretty easy for me, all of our stuff is
combined, but there's a lot of stuff from before my time that he can go through
himself. Going forward with paperwork - my system, which I have kind of established
over the last year, is to break in the mail or the paperwork I put it in one
place. So here's our mail from last week. I haven't even opened it, I put it in a
special place as soon as I bring it in and it goes in there and then on Tuesdays
'plan a pay day' I open all my mail, deal with it, and throw away as much as
possible. Like I said kind of what I was going through things the only items that
I keep are the current not replaceable items so I hope you are able to tackle
some of your paper clutter with me and find a really great little spot to put
it and just remember nothing gets to go in here that you don't need to keep or
unless you're pulling something else as soon as we get our new house insurance
policy I'll take it put it in here and I'll pull the old one out because why
would I hang on to an expired insurance policy but remember the majority of
things can be thrown away and just out of your life forever I hope that you
made some progress with your paper clutter today and it's
actually I hope you can establish a system that will work for you to prevent
paper from accumulating my best advice is deal with it every single week on
Tuesdays everything you have flyers bills cards artwork everything just
really make an effort to take those 10-15 minutes a week to deal with it
because like I said at the beginning of the video paper work is never going to
just go away completely it always finds its way into our lives have a wonderful
day I hope it's beautiful where you are and you can see the sun is shining I'm
going to go outside a little bit later bye
