Paper Clutter: This ONE change makes Paper Clutter a BREEZE now! (NO more piles!!!)

all right well today i want to show you how paper clutter makes its way all the way through our house so how it comes in where it gets stored and then makes its way back out again too that's the best part [Music] all right so let's head inside and i will get started showing you what we do with paper as soon as it enters our house so i have some mail and um some other like random papers that were in the house this is what's really funny though okay i'm just walking in look what tom put here on the counter what it's almost like you knew i was doing a video on paper clutter today what did i do i have no idea what this random pile of stuff is but it looks like it's long leave it but the temptation is this how it goes in your house is always for everyone to stop right here and put everything on the table but it's like do not pass go do not collect 200 go straight to the recycling in the garbage can with it this is a pile that we're going to talk about in just a minute so we'll get to that but truly like many of you as soon as we get home i head right to the garbage and throw away or recycle anything that we clearly don't need and so i actually i left this pile here intentionally to show you this is what used to happen is that we always had this pile of paper at the end of our island like it was just like a staple like it was just always there it was always taunting me and it just always hung over my head and i never wanted to deal with it and then i don't know do you ever do this like if if someone's coming over then i might move it like over here and then i'd set it next to the stove unless it was someone who's like real company then then it would go on the floor in my bedroom and then uh most often it never actually came out again and i think that's what i've learned about paper clutter is that it's the old piles that are the scariest that are the most daunting that we have absolutely no idea what to do with no longer know what's in it and so we build it up to be this huge thing that we don't want to deal with and so i have to continually tell myself here i just dropped my paper on the floor i have to continually tell myself that small piles aren't scary and so that's why i really try to deal with anything and everything as it comes in the house now so that we don't have these piles sitting around even this like little pile that tom put there i like my my thought is like small piles aren't scary so i could go through that very quickly because most likely there's not really anything in there that that's is that important or that i would have to deal with but but if i leave it like that and with all the papers like all like folded up weird and stuff that that pile becomes scary especially if i add it to another pile and so the key to our paper system now and i'm going to show you specifically where some of this stuff is going to go the key to it is actually sorting it as it comes into the house so we don't end up with these big piles of we don't know what's in them because those are the ones that really taunt us because we assume that everything is important and is a big deal and is going to take a long time to deal with and so that's what i want to show you right now is how i intentionally sort it so even if i'm not able to deal with everything right now i don't ever have these big piles hanging over my head so i think there's two main misconceptions when it comes to our paper clutter system one is that it's somehow going to do it for us but really the only system that works is the one that we work and we continue to use the other is that it has to be fancy or pretty or i don't know anything like that i'm going to show you my system it is not fancy or pretty so anything that comes into our house basically goes into one of four categories so the first is trash recycling or shred so a lot of times we get stuff in the mail that has account information or something personal i for this stuff if there's not a lot to do i don't even bother shutting it i just rip it up over the garbage can and toss it in also keep in mind that anytime we get coupons in the mail these are designed to get you to spend money most often on things that we were not already planning on buying and so if it is a coupon for something that i had no intention of buying before i saw it it automatically goes in the garbage because it's marketing it's trying to get me to spend money and it's another thing that i have to keep track of and then it's going to cost me money so no sense and even being tempted by coupons for me those go directly in the recycling or the garbage so the second category is to do or action items it might be rsvp into a wedding we get these rebate slips from our local home improvement store or this have any of these lying around the good old amazon return and so my rule now is that when these things come into the house if i can complete it in three minutes or less then i just deal with it right away and it depends on the day or what time you know when i'm getting home but it is amazing to me how when i tackle these things right away i can get it right off of my plate it does not have to hang over my head anymore but like if i don't have time to fill out the rebate in the envelope right now then i have a spot for my to do items that i'll show you in just a second and then we have our things that just need to be filed or archived that i don't have to do anything else with so receipts for our taxes i'll show you where those go or we just got this in the mail which is the title to our new camper and so things like this that are very important documents these actually go in there in our safe and so what i do with this is i put this on top of the fridge and tom takes it from there uh if you if we've been friends for any amount of time you know that usually when vehicle titles come in uh tom sells them before they even make it into the safe and so i just let him deal with all of those i'm waiting for a comment no comment everybody's a comedian everyone's a comedian and so i'll show you where i file everything in just a minute and then the last container and this is my newest addition to our paper clutter system is the time will tell container uh how to adhd calls it the slow paper bin i think because it's i don't know the stuff is slowly making its way out of your house again but i love this because it takes away any indecision well actually let's head over there i'll show you where my to do stuff is and my time will tell and we'll talk a little bit more about this okay so like i said first step is the garbage and recycling or super important documents which go on top of the fridge for tom that will eventually make their way and they're safe and then we walk over here to this new area that we created and this last cabinet on the end here i have designated for our paper stuff so i'm going to show you where i'm going to put this stuff in there now all right so i have my pile of stuff here and this is literally what i try to do is just to deal with the stuff as i come in because again big piles are scary little piles are very manageable so i just i have to remind myself like if we keep up on it not that big of a deal if we let it go big annoying pain in the butt right all right so in here is where i keep my time hotel bin or you can call it a slow paper band you could call it whatever you want i don't know i don't want to make a decision right now then so that's down here and so i've showed this before but you know i'll put like plant catalogs these were some paint samples that i got for our new camper which is very exciting but where do you keep stuff like that right like i didn't want to try any of this stuff i didn't want to i'm not keeping it forever so i didn't want to archive it in my phone or on my computer because that's just more inventory that i have to continue to manage when i decide i don't want these paint samples anymore i don't want them anymore i want them gone like just totally gone so this was a great spot for them and this is where like we just got this um let's see how to stop wild parsnips from spreading right like so if i thought like hey i would like to look at that i just don't have time to look at it now i can put it in there and it'll still be there so this has been awesome and this has definitely been one of the biggest keys to not having the piles on the counter anymore because it officially has a home and once it starts to get full then it's very quick to go through it because most likely the stuff at the bottom has expired even like these catalogs now i could very easily get rid of them because i'm not ordering spring flowers and that's what's the beauty of the time will tell bin is that there's nothing in there that requires action so it can get super deep and it still doesn't stress me out or overwhelm me because none of it requires action i didn't forget to do anything i didn't forget about anything right isn't that always the fear when we see a stack of paper i didn't forget anything i put it all in there very intentionally and kept the to-do items out of it and then down here is where i keep our files that we use all of the time so bills if if we didn't have any bills in the mail today i guess lucky yes i guess um but as soon as a bill comes in i open it up i take it out of the envelope and then i put it in our bills folder so that when it's time to pay bills we can pull it out i don't have to search through a stack to find it and there's a couple things that i always try to keep in mind one is that if i can't find it later on then it does not do me any good if i filed it or put it somewhere so that's where broad categories work well for me the other is keeping in mind that 90 of the stuff we file we will never ever ever ever access again we never actually need them again and so again that's where using broad categories works very well for me so then like i said i have this like rebate form that needs to get filled up so ideally i fill these out right away because is there anything worse than knowing that you could have had 10.79 sent back to you and that you didn't do it and so that's where this clipboard um comes into play now so this is my to-do clipboard now and so i just stick that on there and then i hang it back up and what i like about having it on a clipboard is it cannot hold very much but i can grab this and take it with me i could use a bin too but i don't know i there's something about having it hang this way that it's very easy to like see what's on there and to grab it and so um this has been working really well if you had a lot of stuff though i could see we're having like a bin would be nice for that and again back to filing stuff i try to file it right away i used to be the person that would just like have a two file bin or let it stack up and that did not work that stressed me out and got overwhelming it actually takes like three seconds to file something right and i very intentionally only keep the folders that we use really frequently here so like our bills folder our receipts if we have any kind of receipt we want to save for taxes my meal planning sheets are in here and so anything we access on a regular basis i want it handy and then they're all labeled 20 20 so at the end of this year they will get archived for long-term storage if we need them longer and then i'll put new ones in for this year so they never get super full and then i do still have my clear bin with longer term filing steps so if it is something that we don't use very often then i do keep those in a separate spot but i do try whenever i go to like bring something to that bin to those files i file it right away i don't let it sit and stop on top because that is so overwhelming and i've said this before but i do think if at all possible i think it's wise to keep your paper clutter station outside of the kitchen kitchens you know they're really busy and active and they just get cluttered up so easily and so if possible i think it's really good to keep it out of the kitchen i'm trying to think of other types of paper clutter that i'm probably forgetting um like any kind of calendar event if the kids bring home a calendar i always try to put those into my phone right away i don't want to have to try and keep track of the paper calendar or the card or anything like that i just put events into my phone right away and then if i need to share it with anyone else like tom or my mom or my sister then i try to do that too right away because we just have you know there's just it becomes just too much to keep track of and i found that it's just much easier for me for our family and our household if we just keep any kind of event saved in the calendar in our phone and i think my all-time favorite thought on paper clutter comes from marie kondo she says our goal with paper is to not keep any of it so let's be really selective when we're deciding what to keep even if it's just going into our time we'll tell bin remembering that everything we keep in our house is inventory that we have to manage and it adds to our mental load all of the things that we have to remember so unless we truly know that we're gonna use something let's not keep it just in case or for some day the other thing i think that's really helpful to keep in mind is how easy or hard is it to replace again coupons like i said they're designed just to get us to spend money so very easy to replace not much loss if we don't keep it camper titles on the other hand very important right so this obviously i treat differently than this i want to take good care of this i want to make sure i know where it goes but again if it all just ends up in a pile on the counter it can sometimes be hard to keep it all straight so by at a bare minimum sorting stuff as it comes into your house it makes a huge difference and i think you'll find like us we don't have these massive piles sitting around anymore so that has been a game changer for me and has made it so paper clutter isn't so stressful in our house so remember big stacks are scary until we break them down and little stacks are manageable so always attack the little stacks whenever possible but if you do have some big piles of paper clutter sitting around your house we do have some other videos where we talk all about what to do with that i also have a video that talks more in depth about how i set up my file folder system so i'm happy to link to that down below as well and i don't want to forget to mention that our simple homes and homeschools group is open right now as well and paper clutter is actually one of the things that we're going to be tackling coming up in september so we're going to dedicate the whole month to a clean slate to getting these systems fine-tuned and put in place in our house we're going to talk about everything from meal planning and laundry systems to yes paper clutter and simplifying your kids toys and so whether you're a homeschooling mom new experienced or facilitating at school from home we would love to have you join us we'll put all the details down below about that all right well i hope this helps and i'm excited to hear your ideas as well we will definitely look forward to visiting with you again soon

Channel: The Minimal Mom

Views: 466,092

Keywords: minimalism, family minimalism, minimalist, the minimal mom, the minimalist mom, minimalist home

Id: StxjgJLLmAc

Length: 14min 11sec (851 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 25 2020