March Update

Looks like I'm doing monthly updates rather than weekly. Well, that's ok, BECAUSE. Major breakthrough!

Since my last post, I have discovered the tool I have been waiting, wishing, and hoping for. It's the Fujitsu ScanSnap 510. Click HERE to behold the wonder that is instant sheet-fed scanning! I have been burning up the moveable parts catching up on scanning and absolutely just PLOWING through the files, stacks, and magazines.

I am forcing a new habit of processing my magazines the day they arrive. I can relax on this after this monster project is done, but for now, I want to continue applying the principle of "do the most recent first" (I've seen this mentioned many times in reference to scrapbooking photo collections).

Anyway, this tool is genius. I discovered it accidentally one Thursday or Friday night in mid-february. I read all the reviews, gave it some thought, and bought it from Amazon within 24 hours of learning about it. It arrived a few days later and this last month has been so fun! I should be embarrassed to admit that!

I think the bigger picture there is that finally I can actually see the light of day to getting out from under my obnoxiously large paper collection. Things I had hung onto for so long - work reference materials, valuable information from conferences I've attended - even just paperwork, records, statements, etc. that I've been dragging my feet on because the flatbed just took too long and my software kept freezing on me, losing all the stuff I'd scanned anyway.

Within another month, I hope to report that my piles are H-I-S-T-O-R-Y!

Eighty-Seven

That's the number of plastic storage containers I have accumulated. Now, of course, i didn't realize this since the were acquired one, two, three at a time.

I got sort of stalled the last several weeks with the whole paper taming project and so, with intent to shake up the "chi" surrounding my possessions, I literally tore apart the spare bedroom. Now this room was full of things. Crates, boxes, an armoire filled with things, things on top of the armoire, things stuffed in the closet...under the bed...on the bookshelves.

Not enough stuff to qualify for an Oprah/Peter Walsh intervention, but enough. Enough that i feel weighted down, heavy, unable to move through my own life again. Perhaps this is just a depression manifesting itself, but either way, it needs to be tackled.

So I began. Friday..maybe Saturday. I can't even remember now. But I slogged, I sorted, I tossed, I trashed. And in the end, I have a room that is still not really functional, BUT, the piles are on their way to something. I cleared out the armoire, the closet, under the bed. I also worked in the office, clearing off the shelving unit and the black hole called a closet.

Lots of progress, lots of things to donate and give away. More paper and labels than I will ever use in a lifetime. A hidden stack of MORE magazines, which have been added to the pile to go through. Eighteen years of Writer's Digest (not that it helped much, eh?). INSANE.

I have begun. To lighten, to liquify, to lessen that which holds me down and hold me back. I have 87 plastic storage containers to go through. For the first time in my life, I am thankful for the apparent long winter still in front of us!

Kicking My A%@(#$*()Q#@

That's what these last two weeks have done. I can't believe we are only 24 days into the new year and already I am....tired.

Well, carry on. Suck it up. That's my advice to myself. Along with "this too shall pass".

So.

Me-0, Magazines-1

The piles are no smaller. I did divest a large unsorted tear pile that I started sometime in mid-December and got that straightened out finally. Now I just need to re-focus and really kick ass on the piles of whole mags. Since my recycle bin filling of early January, I haven't done much.

I could blame work or something, but I'm not really sure what it was/is. Just have to plug away and try to shift momentum back in my favor.

Year End Wrapup

Just a few days late! Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with all I accomplished on this project in 2007. I didn't really get started on it until June, and I have made some great headway into clearing the clutter, once and for all! So much so that it took me 8 trips yesterday to take stacks of magazines out to the recycle bin!

I've even started to extend my decluttering to other parts of the house - I have two boxes going in the kitchen and did a 27-fling in there last night. Actually have more than 27 things already and it was just a rudimentary once-over. Today I want to get some storage for the miscellaneous spices and things so I can organize them better and gain some space in the lower cabinet. That will help in finding homes for all the "crap" that sits on top of the shelving.

If only everything were falling into place so nicely. Humph. I'll just keep on with the forward momentum and see where it takes me. Here's to '08!

How many hours?

Will it take to finish this?



Sheesh. I should be ashamed of myself. In fact, I am. Wow. This is about 6 months worth of magazines and catalogs. And probably one or two of the stacks are older magazines I think I moved over here when cleaning up the spare bedroom for when Jeff and Andrea visited in July. I am plowing through Stack #1 (shortest one, front far left). That was as high as the others at the start of this week.

Bad weather has helped keep me inside and working on it. Slow and steady progress. I need to speed it up, though!

Also, I've successfully cleaned out/up the tall storage shelves in the office. There is still a lot of stuff - binders, materials, things to look at closer, but all 6 of the drawers are empty. Or almost empty. I've thrown a few things back in them to get them out of the way, but nothing major.

Have thrown out at least 4 trash bags of stuff this week - woohoo!! Wonder how many pounds that is? They were heavy, that's all I know.

Onward.

Week of Disasters

Ok, first of all, I should be ashamed of myself. I was using an external HD more than I should have been - i.e., as a working drive and not backup storage as it should have been. It started acting wonky a few weeks ago, and did I leap up and back up all the files (all 300G+ of them?) NO. I did not.

So you know what happened next - actually, let me digress for a moment.

I decided on Sunday that I needed to shake things up a bit. Recalling back to the days when I used to clean and change my bedroom around all the time, and how cool and new everything felt, and how creative and inspired I felt after I did it. Now I know it's moving around the "chi" that causes that feeling!

Anyway, so I'm working on a few things Sunday morning, drive is working fine. I shut down my PC to start Operation Clean Office. 8 hours later I plug my PC back in, plug the HD into the USB drive, and....nothing. I can clearly hear the disk isn't powering up. Just a few faint clicks. And then my panic attack begins. Along with the worst case of self-loathing imaginable. I am smarter than this. I am more tech-savvy than this. I just plain KNOW BETTER. And yet...all is lost.

Or not. I have solicited the (very costly) services of a data recovery facility. Shipped the HD off yesterday and am tracking it via UPS like it's my own child. I am sick. And sad. And miserable. I feel like a limb has been amputated. Every digital photo I've ever taken is on that drive. Every file, every scan, every work product. See what I mean about how stupid I was?

I don't care the cost, I am just hoping, praying, pleading that this data recovery process will work. The HD has been delivered - now I wait for the prognosis from the engineer. As HD failures go, this one wasn't awful. No horrid noises (i.e. the sounds of the disks being destroyed) or anything. Mr. RedFish thinks it's mechanical failure (i.e. the read/write head) rather than sector/disk damage. PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE.

It's been a rough few weeks for odd things like this. First, our Garmin GPS unit stopped working while we were in PA for Thanksgiving. It was fine one minute, then we picked up my brother and his gf, and got back in the car, and nothing. Luckily, it was still under warranty, so we sent it back to be repaired.

Then my external HD. Oh, before that, my iPhone froze up and I had to restore it back to factory settings, which wiped out all my saved voicemails and pictures. It wasn't catastrophic like the HD collapse, but it was annoying.

I'm getting to the point where I don't want to touch anything electronic!

BUT..in what I am reading as omens of changing fortunes, good things started happening yesterday after the data recovery people got back to me so quickly (within an hour of my SOS call). The new Garmin arrived via UPS. They replaced our old one instead of repairing it. Then, I opened a program on my PC and found a cached version of one of the lost files. A major one, too. So that made me feel good...at least I have one.

So the upshot of the office rearranging is that I emptied out some drawers, gathered almost two boxfuls of stuff to get rid of, am on the way to finding more. The downside is the spare bedroom is a mess again, because I had to move stuff somewhere. I also miss my old behemoth of a desk more than I realized I would. But it's just an adjustment period, I guess. Less space is frustrating to me right now, but the point is to downsize. I shouldn't need a ton of crap on my desk to work....minimalize! (Is that even a word?).

I also found another foot-high stack of ripped magazine pages in the bottom drawer of one of my storage units. I thought it was all recipes/food, but turns out it isn't. Which is good in one way, because I can get rid of it. Bad, in another, because now I have to go through it! The fun never ends.....lucky for me, just a little work to do now and snow on the way. With my tight budget (what Christmas shopping?) and the cold weather, I have no excuse for not cranking this stuff out. If only I were writing or doing something that would make me money...

I just really want my files back from that hard drive. Then I can get back on track (with backups securely in place)

Minor Update

Not a lot of progress to report, what with finishing up "real" work and Thanksgiving in there. But I'm plugging away on the whole magazine piles. This will keep me busy well into 2008, but I have a good system going and hope to move as quickly as possible!

And we're off...

An end and a beginning!

Tonight, just completed all the previously mentioned piles.

I am beginning work on the stacks of magazines. WOO HOO!

Done!

Let's recap, shall we?

Done!:
2 large crates in closet
all loose pages stored in armoire (1 box, 1 overflow pile, 1 wooden crate)
almost all of 2 crates full of "unprocesed" pages from tv stand in office
1 broken and in need of help crate from office stack
original piles sitting on desk when this project started.

That's a lot since July!

I am just about done with the aforementioned unprocessed pages that were in the crates that form my office tv stand. I am not sure why I decided to do these when they were "hidden" by the cover, but I knew they were there, and by moving them out, I accomplished two things: all the loose piles are accounted for, and I created some new storage space for things off my desk. Will deal with all that later.

In looking around my space this morning - office, spare room/future office, I can see where I'm going. The decluttering is a HUGE project. I realized there is a large storage bin in the spare room full of loose pages. Not sure if they are sorted or what. But I am sticking to my rule of leaving things alone if they are contained right now. And in the other room. Now that I've reached this point, it's time to tackle the next most visible thing - the towering stacks of whole magazines.

I plan to try and process these as I go along - scanning, etc. rather than forming huge piles. Hopefully I can find a lot of it online and/or can be extremely judicious in tossing. As I am realizing, things are cyclical. Everything comes back around again. If only I could just toss the whole lot and call it a day! My OCD will not allow it though. How could I toss all that delicious treasure!

At least I ENJOY this!

Categories, Fun, and Progress

Another month without an update has gone by! But that doesn't mean no progress. Despite taking a week-long vacation earlier this month, I am nearly through all of the "loose" pages I started working on this summer.

The box, piles from the armoire, and the closet, are done. I want to say "gone", but with my sorting system, it's not really gone. A LOT did go into the circular file, at least.

My ultimate goal, at the end of all this, is to have at least what I'm still working through or on, to be separated and organized, rather than piles here, piles there, no organization.

My system is this:

1. To Scan-pages I want to scan/keep for any reason. Right now, there is just one not-quite-full crate of these. My plan once I start on the intact magazines is to scan as I go along with those - don't want to risk getting a crapload of NEW piles sitting around! So this crate may be the very last one I scan. Probably in 2011.

2. To Read-things I am interested in reading, but don't feel the need to scan/keep afterwards. I intend to always carry a file of this and keep another file for before-sleep reading as well. The least important stuff also - could be tossed if absolutely necessary.

3. To Keep (Pictures)- ads, graphics, visual things I want to keep, but not scan

4. To Keep (Reference)- things like tear-out guides, posters, things meant to "tear and save". May scan at some point, may not.

5. Two-Sided/Lists - pages that have info on both sides -- I'm just not dealing with typing/copying/cutting right now. They go in this file to be dealt with later. Lists, that I might want to type up or review, also in this pile.

6. Food/Recipes- self-explanatory. Will be gone through, sorted, scanned, categorized separately

So, where I stand right now:

1. Finishing last of wooden crate pulled from armoire. This will be done in the next day or so.
2. Will do two wooden crates in office (where tv is sitting). I believe this is "raw" piles that I tore out last winter or summer, and when I decided I needed to get these No Scan piles taken care of, I swapped out No Scans for these.
3. I was going to leave the above along, since they are stored and hidden, but then realized they are the last piles in the office. There may be some loose pages in crates over in the spare room, but one thing at a time.
4. After that's done, I start on the intact magazines. Most recent first - that working backward thing is the best trick I ever read for "catching up" on anything. I originally read it in relation to scrapbooking photographs - you should start with your most recent, or else you will NEVER catch up. Makes total sense, it's so obvious. Yet many people start from the oldest and try to go forward. Does not work with anything you continue to add on to.

It doesn't look like it sometimes, but progress is happening!

Slow and steady...

I can't believe no update since 8/30. Where did September go? I've been moderately but steadily busy with work, but have continued to plug away at the loose stacks mentioned in previous posts. I recently did a mini-cleanup and am down to one crate and the original box brought over from the armoire.

Gone are the two crates from the closet (and I was right, so much of that stuff was old, outdated, or irrelevant - hello, wedding planning information?!). I haven't measured lately, but I've moved quite a lot of recycle bags outside.

I realized not too long ago that the two crates currently serving as my office tv stand ALSO have stacks of loose magazine pages stuffed in them. I seem to remember these are "raw" piles - the crates once had "No Scan" stacks in them, but I remember swapping out the no scan piles a while ago -- maybe even before I really started focusing on this project -- because I realized that my No Scan piles were getting way out of hand. So I put the raw (unsorted and unprocessed) piles in the crates and did the No Scans. Who knows when...earlier this year I guess.

I haven't done much scanning - all year really. My last major push was last fall. So that's why I assume the switch over to getting through the stuff I didn't plan to scan happened after the holidays last year. The couple of times I've tried to catch up on some scanning my software has crashed, taking all the temp files with it, and it pissed me off so I didn't start again!

Overall, making progress. Maybe not as much as I'd like, but as FlyLady says, "Progress, not Perfection". I am getting there. And having fun along the way. My system is solid and consistent and I am making a dent in the piles.

What I need to focus on next is the ever-growing stacks of intact magazines on my office credenza. Yowza. Way out of hand. I really want to hit the end of the calendar year with at least the "catch up point" in sight. Busy busy busy!

Brain Dumping Update

Another busy two weeks leading into the Labor Day weekend, and my brain is buzzing again. I really need a PenSeive*. Work has kept me busy through most daylight and into the night hours, but the past few days I had a surge of free time so took the opportunity to plug away at the latest stack. I cleared probably almost 10". Lucky for me, it was a pre-sorted "No Scan" pile, so I could move quickly through it.

Never content to let progress stand too long, I just on a whim decided to bring in a new foot-high stack from the armoire in the spare room. This puts my "beside the desk" pile back up to max height (i.e. the top of the desk). But even though I'm "refreshing" it, I feel like I am making progress. Better progress than ever before.

The last time I caught up this much was when I wasn't working back in 2002-2003. I didn't have the same type of plan in place to clear it all back then though. It was more like "wow, cool that I have all this". Now, I want it GONE! Plus I have better tools - better pc, scanner, software, etc.

Also during August I pulled out two crates from the closet. I *think* these are the only two in there with magazine/paper-related materials. The rest is all office supplies that will need sorting and purging at a later date. That's part of the bigger declutter plan!

I'm hoping this stack from the armoire is old enough to just toss 99% of it. That fact is what drives me forward. Realizing that if I had a better system of reading my materials when they're current, the info will mean more. I am pushing myself to get this backlog done so that I can read and enjoy and use the CURRENT magazines and websites.

I am to the point of tossing without even looking (big deal for me!) at articles having to do with technology (although when I do occasionally read one, they are amusing in how much things have changed since the dark ages of 1998!), skin care (nothing changes, every magazine covers this seasonally), and health and beauty products. These "new and exciting" products are now 5, 6, 7 years old...so many new ones have come out since then, why bother? I'll find the new, cool stuff. I might make a note of a cosmetics company that is new to me, but that's about it. Toss, toss, toss!! Bags and bags of trash, leaving the house nightly! SO FUN!

*A PenSeive is a magical object from the Harry Potter books. It allows one to remove thoughts from one's brain and store them away for either safekeeping or pondering at a later date. Removed thoughts can go back into one's brain when ready. A fabulous concept that really should be invented for us Muggles**.

** The 7th book in the series came out July 21. I decided before reading it, I would delay the inevitable ending of the series (No!) by re-reading the entire series before culminating in the last book. So the entire month of August I have been reading Harry. I'm on Book 6 now, so am completely immersed in HP culture.

Don't Know Why...

I pulled out more files to go through before finishing the current project. There is something about the chaos and disorder that I both love and hate. Love because it's fun, hate because I hate messiness and want my office to look like a Pottery Barn catalog.

It started when I decided I really wanted to move my "To Scan" pile off my desktop. It's about 6" high or so, and the cats keep knocking it over. I almost bought a few new file boxes at OfficeMax yesterday, then decided that $12 was a ridiculous price for a plastic box, and that I had plenty of them at home already.

I knew there were two plastic crates in the office closet that were full. Memory told me they were "NO Scan" crates but not having looked lately, I wasn't entirely sure. So this morning, I decided I wanted one of those crates to be a holding pen for the Scan pile instead.

Pulled it out, sure enough, a Post-it! "No Scan - Sorted 5/03" May of 2003. Wow. The bright side is I will fly through this stack because I've been brutal with keeping things that are out of date now. About damn time, eh?

Then I peek back into the depths of the back corner of the closet and alas! Another crate. I leave it at first, but then it nags at me, so I pulled that one out too. These are bigger crates, meant for filing, so the stacks measure nearly 15". I took the content of one crate and stacked it on top of the never-ending pile sitting next to my desk chair. I'm so proud of myself because I have gotten this pile down to about 14" twice now.

1. Original pile - came from armoire. Box fill, plus another pile on top. Got this down to level with top of box - roughly 1 foot high.

2. Then moved another stack from office table to top of this pile. Got that back down about 6' or so before being sidelined by work for the last week and a half.

3. Piled high as it will go again due to clearing out file crate from closet. I even have about 6' of overflow to contend with.

I'm excited each time I tackle a new "container" though, whether crate, file box, cardboard box, etc. I can see the plan in my head and know where I am going with all this. At times I think "what a waste of time", but I always come back to the fact that this is fun for me, in some ways. It's a hobby, yes, but it ballooned out of control.

That's nothing new. I remember having boxes and boxes of paper and stuff as a kid. Catalogs, magazines, whatever. I even remember getting wallpaper sample books from a neighbor's parents. Those things kept me busy for a LONG time.

I graduated to magazines. I remember my bedroom in the apartment in West Chester being full of cardboard boxes that I never did anything with. Too busy having a social life back then! They all moved to Chicago wit me, where they say for another 2 years (and through two apartments) while I was busy with work and social lives.

Now that I'm too old to go out drinking every night, I can finally tackle the decluttering. Maybe I didn't care enough or want to do it enough back then. Now I do. So it's fun. I enjoy seeing the things that have interested me over the years (like that file I kept on Shabby Chic decorating...SO over that now!)

I just want to get to the point where my filing and reading and collecting and scanning are all on equal ground, time-wise. Like the Shabby Chic file...I kept it when I either had no means to purchase things to decorate in that style, or else I had the money, but couldn't find the file anyway! I want information that is meaningful to me at my fingertips, completely searchable and accessible in real-time. Is that asking too much?!

Email Evolution

I'm going to say it - I have complete control over my email. No, seriously. It took a lot of hard work and habit changing, but I can honestly say email overload is the ONE information overload symptom I do not have. How on Earth is this possible?

Well, it wasn't always that way. Like everyone else, I got sucked into the "sign up for this newsletter", "add your address to this mailing list" craziness over the years. I was *DROWNING* in email for a very long time. I was getting upwards of 500 emails a day. That includes work-related, personal, mailing lists, newsletters, email related to volunteer projects, etc. Any message that came into my Inbox. Sometimes I didn't read them for days.

I had that tic I see in so many others now, wherein I felt the need to check my email 20 times an hour. Now? Twice a day, max. Maybe more if I'm working on a particular project. But any message that comes in is read, handled, and deleted, or in rare circumstances, filed away.

I used to have a file folder tree of 60 folders. Now, I have three.

What spurred this on was reading the "Inbox Zero" posts on 43folders.com. That started the wheels turning last fall. I spent time over the winter clearing out Archive folders and really LOOKING at the types of email I received.

Then, I discovered RSS. Major breakthrough. I started subscribing to the feeds for site I got email updates from, such as IdealBite and DailyCandy. Now, if I have a busy day and can't read those immediately, I can spend a leisurely evening with my laptop and Google Reader and catch up. What a concept!

As I started to whittle down the email inflow, I had another turning point. I went on vacation. After being gone for 10 days this past March, I came back to something like 1600 messages. Something had to be done.

So I took some time, 8 evenings to be exact, and went through my emails. Not just scan, move to a folder, ignore. But really looked. And then I started unsubbing. Talk about liberating. In my obsessive-compulsiveness, I did keep a list of newsletters and emails I thought I might miss, so that if I actually did, I could find the name of the site or company, and go resubscribe.

Now, nearly 5 months later, I miss almost none. I read almost everything with content via RSS. All the "Shop Now - Big Sale" ad/messages I used to get? Whatever. I know what online retailers I like to shop. There is almost always some sort of sale going on. If there isn't, I just check back. I don't need the email announcement.

I kept some things - recipe lists, animal welfare groups I work with, etc. But what a major difference. This week was especially busy for me work-wise. So I largely ignored any email not directly related to the project I'm on. Tonight, with some time to spare, I cleaned up my email. But it was easy, because I only had 200. That's a week's worth.

I know there are people out there who can't fathom so few emails anymore. Almost as if their level of success or popularity is directly in proportion to the number of emails they receive. I remember suggesting to a project team once that they NOT check email first thing in the morning, and instead, knock out the 1st task on the plan, just as an experiment to see how much more efficient we could become . Every single person looked at me as if I were insane. I would have gotten a better reception if I'd suggested ritual sacrifice first things every Monday.

Oh well..I'll continue to enjoy my freedom while they pass the time in "email jail"!

Making Way

Lots of progress over the last week+. That huge stack sitting on the floor next to my desk? Got it down to less than half it's size (which was 2.5 FEET) in less than a week. Lucky for me, there was a ton of useless "toss it the second I look at it" pages. I won't even ask myself why I was keeping them for so freakin' long.

As a result, I moved the next pile I planned to tackle over on top of what remained of the big stack. So it's back up to equal height with my desk again - BUT, when I look at the table in my office, there is a huge empty spot on it now, so things balance out.

I've been thinking a lot about the whys and hows of this project, and noticed that I am more committed to getting rid of all this paper, in my own fashion, then ever before. My obsession is even dwindling -- as I remind myself every day, with the Internet, all things are accessible these days. This habit of mine formed back in the Dark Ages, i.e., before Internet. Now I really don't need 75 articles on summer skin care. The basic concept never changes, every women's magazine covers it in the May issue... etc.

The exciting thing is although I have a long way to go, I can see the finish line. Or at least I know what it looks like. Getting some stuff scanned in as PDFs will go a long way, too, although my stupid software crashed the other night after I'd already scanned over 100 pages. Lost them all. GRRRR.

It will be an awesome day when I have my files all sorted and labeled consistently, when everything is indexed via Google Desktop Search and I can put my hands on whatever I want within seconds. :-)

Another Milestone

Finished that 9" stack I mentioned previously last night. Well, I cheated a bit and tossed the last 1/2" or so on top of the new stack I started today. But still....another victory!

What I really need to do is get scanning again to make a dent in the gi-hugic pile of "To Scan" materials.

Am tackling the giant stack that came from the armoire now, that has been sitting beside me since practically Memorial Day. I won't know what to do with myself with space to move around my desk! My inner organizer is screaming to clean up the desk and surrounding area, but I'm letting the clutter be my inspiration to keep moving. Hiding it out of sight is what got me into this mess in the first place!

I was thinking back yesterday though, about all the crap I've gotten rid of since I really started to clean and let go back in May. I had a bookshelf with one whole shelf full of just those cardboard magazine holders. They were stuffed with tons of random crap - old work materials, ALL of my classwork from college that was now over 4 years old (or more!).....I kept a few specific things - papers I was particularly proud of, some notes from the best class I ever took in my life, but everything else went into the trash. I realized yesterday how good it felt to know that was gone!

Clutter really does have an effect on the psyche. I believe there is some connection between letting go of the past and letting go of the related clutter. I remember once finding a box filled with old canceled checks, bill statements, and other financial paperwork. None of this was tax-related, and it was all from an era in which I really struggled with money. I no longer do and my finances (if nothing else!) are in perfect shape (I am an avid Quicken user). I felt that having this connection to the time when I had money woes was bad karma, so out it went. What a great feeling! I read about feng shui a lot, and this seems to fit with the basic concept of feng shui. Good for me!

Done!

The stack I was working on this week and last. Finished it late last night...staying up way too late to slog through, but so be it. I feel as if I'm probably 2 weeks behind as it is...but as FlyLady says, I'm not behind, just jump in where I am. And so I did.

Now to tackle the 2.5 FOOT stack from the armoire. ...

One minute I feel like I'm making good progress and just documenting it helps. Then I look around and see all I will have to do. I need to keep my head down and stop looking at it I guess!

Baby steps.

Back at it...

Well after a couple of weeks derailment with major work projects and the July 4th holiday week (which really did turn into a WEEKlong vacation, complete with family visiting from out of town and lots of tourist-in-my-own-town activities.

Last week I made little progress, maybe a magazine's worth a night, if that. So this week I'm determined to get back on track with the declutter project.

Since yesterday, I've been working on a9" stack of what I call "fresh" tearouts - unsorted, straight from the magazine. This is the pile I mentioned before that came out of one of my filing bins sitting next to my desk. A lot of this pile is now in the "To Scan" pile since it was never gone through before, but I'm making good progress overall. Got a LOT done last night while watching the ballgame. I just measured and it's about 3.5" high now. My goal is to polish it off tonight and start on the tall stack sitting next to me.

This pile is (hopefully) mostly No Scans and I can tear through it. This is the pile that came from the armoire in the spare room when I cleaned it out back in May. I had started it last month but then decided to do the smaller pile mentioned above.

Finding lots of good stuff so it's been fun. Even though I *should* be working.....

One Down

I polished off the first stack of paper. Well, first since starting this blogging project. Many more have come before it! This was the pile from the broken crate, about 10" in height. There is a new stack in its place already. The file crate sitting next to my desk, which I do use to actually file papers I plan to keep (at least temporarily), had this "to go through" stack stored in it. Probably a result of one of my mass cleanups before company came, or one of the days I got sick of being surrounded by the clutter.

But it's out and I'm working on it. My real job is keeping me busy so we'll see how long this one takes. I got through the other stack in less than a week. Then I need to start tackling the BIG pile sitting next to me. This is what came out of the armoire in my spare room/future office.

5 Inches & Dropping!

Part of the method behind the madness of a blog on this topic was to give me a way to track my progress in eliminating my paper clutter, as well as an accountability to the "weight loss" as I sort, file, scan, and most importantly, trash stuff!

I had a pile of "Do Something With It" sitting on my scanner for a few months and then I was going through magazines and tearing them up, so I had another pile to go through on the *other* side of my desk. I finally started the do-something pile a few weeks ago and was cruising along on that.

What's key to know here is these are "No Scan" piles. Mostly magazine pages, I either slice them up and drop the pieces into a storage box, or I make a note of whatever is on the page that inspired me to keep it in the first place - a movie title, book recommendation, beauty product to try, etc. It sounds time-consuming, but believe me, I can fly through these if I get into a zone.

The pieces I keep are usually those front-of-book items - short pieces or snippets of info. I keep the ones on topics I'm interested in. My vision is to eventually go through these and catalog them using another blog. Over the years I've wondered how I can make this info searchable and indexed (otherwise, piles of storage boxes filled to the brim with pieces of paper is not a good system!). But that will come in time...for now, cut and drop into the box.

Yesterday I was moving some stuff around in my spare bedroom, AKA, Paper Hell, and discovered one of the plastic storage/file crates I've got stacked in there was broken in several places. So I moved it and brought the stack of paper in it over to my office. I decided to get through that before returning to the original "No Scan" pile.

It was probably somewhere between 6"-7" when I started early last week. It's now down to 3.5". I'm hoping to finish it by Tuesday. Keeping my fingers crossed.......