Decluttering Week #1 – Paper Clutter

I know I said I would post this on Wednesday, but the week got away from me, as is evident from my lack of success on my goals this week, but none-the-less, here is my decluttering post for week #1.

This is my first week of my decluttering goal for 2015.  This week’s task: Paper Clutter.

I had several places where the paper clutter gathered: random boxes in my office/craftroom, my filing cabinet, the kitchen counter, the coffee table, the front hall, the top of my dresser, and then I even found some more boxes in the basement…

The paper clutter also came in various forms: bills and documents that I may or may not need, manuals for appliances and electronics that may or may not still be in our possession.  I have a few boxes of old school work that my parents decided to move from their basement to mine.  Random notes and certificates… And that’s just the start…

I knew that I wasn’t going to get everything cleaned up in one week, especially because it was a busy week of getting back in to the swing of things, and then I forgot that I was also going away for the weekend, so I concentrated on my filing cabinet and the papers that should be in there (leaving the memorabilia and old school work for another time).

I really love a good before and after photo comparison, but paper clutter doesn’t really work as well for before and after shots, and I was so excited to get started that I didn’t take a good before picture, so here’s a picture of my sort of midway point.  At this point I had sorted through most of the loose papers that I had found, put them in piles and the piles in to folders to keep them neat (and to hopefully avoid the cats “helping” with my sorting by messing up my piles).  I had also shredded 2 bags worth of shreds (not sure what else to call the results of shredding papers?).

Anything older than 5 years is probably not needed anymore.  Time to get the paper shredder working.  I shredded so much that my paper shredder overheated a few times and I ran out of paper bags to put the shreds in.

Anything that I’m saving to be scrapbooked I put in a basket to be sorted and labeled another time.  I’ll make my scrapbooking stuff another weekly task later on in the year…

The cats were definitely interested in why I was sitting in the middle of the floor playing with papers.

And after a few evenings of work sorting and shredding, I finished up with this:

I have three stacks of folders to be put back in my filing cabinet (done now).  I have a small folder of things that had been forgotten and need to be dealt with before I can either shred them or file them away.  I have a pile of papers that still need to be shredded (when I get some more bags to put the shreds into).  I have a pile of papers that can just be recycled without being shredded (already moved to the recycle bin).  I have 6 bags of shredded papers to be recycled (also already moved to the recycle bin).  And I have a stack of unused office supplies that I will put away for now (also done now).

Not bad for week #1 of decluttering.

* Sorry that my photos aren’t great.  I will need to work on my iPhone photography skills…