Today I challenge you to get rid of some type of paper clutter you have in your home. Maybe it is a stack of newspapers that you need to tie up and take to the curb. Maybe it’s a bunch of old magazines you have been meaning to pull an interesting page out of but never got around to. Maybe it’s junk mail or old bills or papers your kids have brought home from school that are no longer relevant. Today is the day.
GET RID OF THE PAPER TODAY
Come back at the end of the day and tell us what you got rid of!
Oh dear. One of my weak areas since the beginning of time is stacking papers. We have two half walls and the kids bring home stuff from school and mail and store ads come in and and and. I try to go through it once a month, but I have never broken the habit of stacking papers. I know what to do, but I just never actually do it.
I will make an effort to do the half walls today. It doesn’t take a long time, but there’s always still a small stack. I don’t know if I just hate dealing with it or if I’m afraid of misplacing something. But it is one of my worst habits.
Right now I’m re-heating Fettuccine for Ally. LOL Dang it! I shouldn’t have frozen it all!
I wind up with a pile on the end of one counter. It’s just one pile, but it makes me crazy, and yet, I’m the one who puts it all there.
Today, I am focusing on magazines. I get quite a few magazines, because it is our school’s major fundraiser and I want to support our school…and I love magazines. Next year I think I’ll be purchasing less. However, in the meantime, this year, I get quite a few. So, I’m going through all of them and pulling out any pages I want and then I am bringing the rest to school tomorrow to put in the teacher’s room. I’ll post a total later. It’s gonna be big.
I ditched 16 ads. Mostly junk mail like over-sized post cards, fast-food coupons that are expired and I probably wouldn’t have used them anyway, but I keep them for the two older kids in case they go with friends. I save all the grocery ads that come in the mail even though they are online. I don’t know why!
I still have school papers left to sort through. With that it’s guilt that they’ll think I don’t care how they did! Sometimes I put them on the fridge, but usually, I acknowledge and yet don’t throw them away.
Two years ago, all the kids went to Canada for two weeks and I went through all their school work that I had kept. Some of the stuff was silly to keep. Other things I know they worked hard on and I wanted to still keep. I took some photos of some funny things I found and sent them to them when they were in Canada. LOL I keep that stuff in a spare drawer and in our attic closet in a box. But often times, it’s on the half wall stacking up and waiting on me to do something with it.
35 magazines in a bag by the garage door so I can bring them to school tomorrow. I feel much lighter. They’ve been weighing me down, metaphysically and clutter-wise.
We have recycling bins by the back door and the City provides a big bin they empty every two weeks. DH empties our inside bins a couple times a week. Each one would hold two grocery bags worth of recycling and we have three. We only fill the City bin half full over the course of two weeks though.
DH is currently on a long term mission to shred all the girls homeschool stuff. They’ve been graduated over 10 years now. They aren’t going to want their math or vocabulary workbooks.
We are pretty good with keeping up with newspapers. We read it and put it into recycle box immediately when done. We take 3 magazines: AAA, a church one, and AARP. I’m pretty good about recycling all of them except the AAA, 'cause I keep thinking I’m gong to visit some of those places! Right now I have some mags that my neighbor gave us, and I’ve forgotten they are in the living room. Time to purge! That paper things that I get most behind on is shredding. We have a shredder in the office, and I pile up stuff to look thru one more time (to make sure I don’t make a mistake), and then it sits there…
I used to hang on to coupons because I would clip every coupon in the insert and then sell the ones I didn’t use for a handling fee. I don’t do that anymore, so I clip the coupons I want and then stick them in the mailbox of a friend at work who also uses coupons. It’s hard to let go of something you think might be able to make you a little money!
Reminders like this are always good! We have the daily newspaper situation well under control - after we’ve both read it, the paper gets folded up again and put on the fence for our neighbor!
And then there is all the other paperwork in our home. I still have at least ten more boxes to go through from school And papers from our many businesses. DH is kept busy shredding - good thing we have a heavy duty shredder!
We have made a commitment to have our home cleared of all but necessities by July as we want to sell it.
And papers from our many businesses. DH is kept busy shredding - good thing we have a heavy duty shredder!