Tag: organization

Refresh: All That Stuff

Published on by Kim

My home contains a lot of stuff. A LOT. OF STUFF. Can you relate at all? If you choose not to be minimalist (or minimalist in spirit but not practice), you end up having to find a place for all that stuff. Once your closets are full, or if you don’t have many closets, we often end up looking at cabinets or shelves for the rest. And that is a good option for items we use often, like shelf-stable food or cookie sheets or toiletries. But the option will hurt more than help if it’s not sufficiently organized.

It helps to be able to find what you need AND cut down on visual clutter. Shelving is great because it is easy to access. It can be a problem, though, if it’s just more layers of unknown piles stacking to the ceiling. If what you need is buried, you can’t get it and you are oppressing your brain in the process!

Sort. Sort. Sort. Put like items together. Make it easy to see where things are in a split-second glance. Which items are often used together? Plastic food storage containers can be in the section next to the plastic bags for post-dinner clean-up.

Fit the items to the shelf size. Big shelf, big stuff. Push the little things to the smaller shelves. The less you have stacked, the easier it is to put your hand on it when needed. Keep the big, tall books on the taller shelves and the short paperbacks on the more narrow shelves. It will fill the space better and look neat.

Put what you use most where it is easiest to reach. The heavier, less frequently used stuff can go on the very bottom shelf. The lighter items can go on the top shelf. You will see and reach for the middle shelves the most, so save yourself a few inches.

IMG_4225Hide in plain sight. Just as in closets, this is for shelving in a room. Using baskets or bins or banker’s boxes covered in contact paper will help cut down on the clutter in the room. It is there, but you don’t have to look at it until you need it. Using a neutral color for the bins will make the shapes blend into the background — or you can take the opportunity to add a pop of color to the room.

Mix up your shelving. You can use the same set of shelves for books, a few boxes, a vase with flowers, a few picture frames, and toy storage. It looks decorative, just like in catalogs! This will also help relieve some of the pressure to fill the shelf. Keep what you need and is meaningful. If you only need enough books, toys and pictures to fill one shelving unit — excellent. If it eventually expands to two, no problem, but don’t expand just to fill space.

Which Papers to Keep?

Published on by Kim

This post is a follow-up to Organizing Paperwork, per request.

What to keep and what to toss? This is a key question when talking about paperwork. Organizing trash isn’t so helpful; organizing tools will help a lot.

Which brings us to the two key questions:

Will you need or want that record again?
If you need a record for business purposes or tax records or reimbursement or returning a product to the store or proving a warranty or ownership, those are all good reasons to keep a piece of paper.

But be sure you actually do need it. Because 1) you think you should but aren’t sure why or 2) you don’t really know what you need or 3) you think everyone else keeps them — all not good reasons. You can check with your accountant or the IRS recommendations for business and tax needs. Keep what you need to and be free with the rest. You can keep a receipt for a machine part until it is installed and working, or clothes until you wash and wear them, but then you won’t be returning those things. If you don’t track individual expenses in those categories, you probably don’t need the paper anymore.

I keep my pending receipts like that in one place and recommend you do too. Scattered doesn’t help you find them, and one place is easy to keep current. A clip on the refrigerator, an envelope in the desk, a pocket in your wallet, whatever works for you. Once the paper is not needed, I snap a photo for our electronic file and toss the paper.

If you want to have access to paper records for sentimental reasons, that is a valid reason also. You treasure greeting cards from the past, and that’s ok. But be careful you don’t overweigh the sentimental value with the clutter. If you don’t have adequate storage, you need to reevaluate how you are using the space you have.

Know your needs and be able to apply them to the papers floating around your life.

Is paper the best format?
Now that you’ve answered whether it is good to keep the record at all, you can move to the next question. Does it need to be paper?

For expense records, keep in mind that most accounts now have online records. Your bank statement has proof of purchase and bill payment records. Your utilities have past statements showing usage. If all you need is a reference, that may be sufficient.

Would a scan work just as well? You can invest in a scanner or simply take digital pictures of many things. If you’d rather have your bills in your hands, so to speak, you can download the statements off the website in pdfs for your files too. These files can all be kept in cloud storage, like Evernote, or on your personal computer, backed up with an external hard drive.

There is a difference between the title to your vehicle and your last water bill. Electronic storage is usually safe enough for bills and such.

The same is true for some sentimental papers. Greeting cards can be scanned or photographed. Every day your neighbor brings over a special offering from kindergarten arts & crafts that day. Lovely! You can keep a few precious ones, but the others could be photographed or scanned for enjoyment later instead of taking up physical space. Your refrigerator can be a revolving door: display, document, dispose.

Finally, this is also true for personal reference materials, such as vacation ideas, Bible study notes, appliance manuals, whatever takes up paper space in your life. These can be downloaded or scanned to file storage and referenced as needed instead of taking up drawer space, counter space, or shelf space.

I had a ton of papers from childhood and years past that I did not want to toss, but the big file cabinet was not a good idea anymore. All the contents were consolidated to two banker’s boxes using this reasoning, and the rest was scanned. I actually enjoy referencing some of the scanned items more now that I can easily pull them up!