Last week, I finally swept the cobwebbed carpet of receipts from my desk with my new accounting schtick. But there's still non-receipt papers that I don't have a system to deal with, invading random corners, overflowing baskets and threatening to erupt onto my carefully cleared desk. I resentfully admit that some of these paper ghosts will have a home in my space.
I realize I need a mausoleum, a near-obsolete coffin to house them called a "filing cabinet". And after to a fun afternoon thrift shopping with my neighbour, a footstool-sized filing cabinet followed me home. It's white maw holds 26 alphabetized hanging folders (now with a cushion on it so it really is my footstool). Following Clutterbug Cassandra's method (loosely), I've cleared all of the misc. papers in reach into broad categories.
Now I *did not* relabel the folders: then I would spend a month second-guessing and relabeling. I will not grant them eternal life. This is not a rigid system—instead, I cross-referenced the alphabetic folders with their contents in a Google sheet. That way I can occasionally eliminate something or replace it with a more important category. And I don't have to remember where I put my last permit or who was in that play.
Regardless: it doesn't matter how I filed them, the papers disappeared into it and I can find anything in there in an instant.
I'm happy to say some of the 26 categories are already empty—hard copies are thankfully becoming obsolete with many businesses.
And my desk is clear because folder 'A' holds the things I need to do next and folder 'B' is things I'd like to do that don't have a deadline. I only have to look folder 'A' for things I intend to do today.
The Paper Monster still lurks in boxes and baskets behind my bed, but it's ghostly minions are being exiled one by one. It knows its days are numbered.
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