Photo by _hlian

Paper clutter can easily take over a home office.  This can lead to a less efficient work space, create a stressful work environment, and slow your progress which ultimately wastes your time.

You can get a handle on your paper clutter by breaking your project into these 3 phases:

Phase 1: Sort all your papers. Don’t worry about what you are going to keep or where it is going to go!  Right now, you just need to get all like papers together such as policy information, recipes, bills, etc.  Depending on the amount of paperwork you are facing, you can either sort into piles or you can use several boxes to hold each category.

Phase 2: Purge your papers. Tackle each stack/box one at a time.  Put a bag or another box next to you and go through each paper in your category.  Ask yourself why you still have each paper and do you still *really* need it?  If it’s a hard decision, purge it.  Anything you plan to keep, put back in the box or keep stacked together in a pile.

Phase 3: Organize your papers. Again, tackle each stack/box one at a time.  Chances are most of the papers will go to the same place or be put away in a similar fashion.  As you are organizing, try to think outside the box.

Do you need to keep a physical copy of each paper?  Is it something you can scan in and save on your computer to reference later?  I’ve been able to eliminate a lot of my product manuals by looking for a copy to download online.  That alone has freed up a lot of space in my filing cabinet.

Do you save a lot of your children’s artwork and school papers?  An alternative to organizing the originals is to take digital pictures or to scan these papers and create much more organized and space appropriate memory books.  For those papers that are particularly special, I love love LOVE these Kitsch frames!  They are completely removable/reusable wall decal frames.  Just place your child’s art behind them and stick them to the wall.  A very unique way to display their best work without damaging your walls and you can update them as they grow!

Consider each stack/box separately and tackle each project one at a time.