Project Simplicity Week #2 – Paper Clutter

This particular project surprised me a little, mostly because it wasn’t a particular area. But since my downstairs is often plagued by excess paper I took the project on with a vengeance. As a brief aside I must note that I did not include the filing cabinets in our upstairs back bedroom in this project. These file drawers need to be reorganized along with the entire room they are in. But that is a much larger project that requires more than the few days I had to accomplish this one. I mostly dealt with the random paper floats around the first floor of our home. We do need to find a long term first floor filing solution. Our current file drawers are too large and filing cabinets are rather expensive and unattractive to be taking up space in my dining room. The back bedroom that currently houses our filing is going to become my almost 2 year old daughter’s bedroom sometime this summer, so all of the current roles that room fulfills, such as filing and linen storage, need to be reassigned elsewhere.

Receipt Drawer Before

I began by dealing with the loose receipts in the top drawer of our secretary desk. The storage unit itself is relatively organized but the top drawer contained several months of receipts. I store receipts by the month for a one year period and then I shred them. This is to expedite returns and help with budgeting. The amounts get inputted into our financial Excel spreadsheet and then filed, ideally. But I got lazy and this large, disorganized pile ensued.

Drawer After

The next task was the tackle the dining room table. Ever since we got a small kitchen table, we rarely eat in the dining room. As a result the table becomes a magnet for clutter of all kinds including mail and other random papers. Now that the table is clear of clutter it does have a new occupant, my sewing machine. One of my next personal tasks is to empty the bottom of my dining room hutch and I’m hoping I can store the machine there for easy access. If not, perhaps I can find room for it in my secretary desk, as Simple Mom suggests in her post.

Dining Room Table Before

Dining Room Table After

Overall, this wasn’t an overly taxing project, since I didn’t include the disastrous back bedroom paper clutter, since the room itself is so cluttered it would have taken hours of work just to reach the piles of paper. But I will be forced to deal with it in the next few months as we prepare for our daughter to take up residence in that room.

So two weeks down, it’s on to Week #3.