Project Paper

This month I am all about organizing and cleaning our house, so instead of questioning it - I am just going with it! I decided to take on the Project Paper Challenge from the IHeart Organizing blog and I've been working on it all week. It seems like we always have little stacks of paper, bills, magazines EVERYWHERE all over the house and they drive me crazy. When I read about Jenn's challenge, I decided it was time to get organized. We already have a pretty nice filing cabinet that came with our desk, so it was really just a matter of getting a handle on all of the paper and actually getting the files into the folders.

Most of these "piles" tend to migrate to this area...Our living room/office area downstairs.

PS - yes, those are Christmas presents. We still have not had a chance to exchange with Scott's side of the family, but we'll be celebrating Christmas 2.0 soon!!! 

Once they sit on the desk for a few weeks/months, they tend to get moved down here.

 

This picture is funny to me. That's the filing cabinet. The files are sitting on top of it. So close, yet still so far.

Tired of the piles, I needed a plan. The first thing we did to get a handle on the paper was to go paperless! Since we were already paying bills online and getting statements via email, it seemed the natural next step to stop the statements for most of the accounts that we could. I am hoping this really helps with the excess paper - and save a tree or two in the process!

Next I worked on a system to keep the paper we needed to have in check. I found this notebook on sale at Walmart and thought it was perfect to keep the papers we needed. Using my trusty label maker, I labeled each folder. The first two categories are To Do and Bills and then each family member got a section, followed by an area for coupons.

Now, when we check the mail or bring in papers from school/work, we'll file them in this area. Then you fold it up and the papers/piles are out of sight! I'm planning to glean the papers at least monthly and then transition any items we need to keep into the filing cabinets we already have in place.

I also used several IKEA media bins we already had to organize all of the random stuff we had lying out in this area.This made the area look much neater and cleaner.

Lastly, I placed a file holder on top of the filing cabinet - primarily to keep computer paper in, but it will also be a place for papers to sit while waiting to be filed.

Once I had the system down, then I could sort through all of the existing files, shred the ones we no longer needed, file the ones we did and get everything straightened up. Here's the before and after...

BEFORE

AFTER