Paper Doll, Tackling The Stacks And Piles by Julie Bestry
From credit card statements to Post-Its®, birthday party invitations to oil change coupons, expense reports to dental appointment cards, our modern lives and horizontal surfaces are overrun with paper. We're not sure what happened to that paperless office we were promised at the dawn of the computer revolution, but the more we go digital, the more paper we have. OnlineOrganizing.com's Paper Doll helps make sense of what papers to keep, where to keep them and for how long, and will offer some solutions and observations about winning the 21st century paper chase. These tips will even help you keep more of those little green pieces of paper everyone likes so much.
A British bank is run with
precision. A British home requires nothing less! Tradition, discipline
and rules must be the tools! Without them: disorder... catastrophe!
Anarchy! In short, you have a ghastly mess!
~ George Banks, Mary
Poppins
Bankers may have
undeservedly dour reputations. (Please note, I don't mean banks. There's not a day
that goes by that someone isn't blogging about the excessive fees and
impersonal treatment perpetrated by banks on their customers.) ...
College classes are starting up again. Almost exactly one year ago, we talked about ways of getting rid of textbook clutter, including renting textbooks from companies like Chegg, BookRenter, Campus Book Rentals and Skoobit. These options are still going strong, but thanks to new legislation and advancing technology, there are even more opportunities for college students (and their parents) to save some of those bits of little green paper when buying textbooks.
The world of professional organizing isn't likely to become a mystery
classic. I don't anticipate Decluttering on the Orient Express, The Maltese Filing
Cabinet or The Thin Man's Disturbing Pile of Paper
Clutter to become New York Times best-sellers. And certainly, I
doubt anyone's ever thought of writing a mystery about office supplies.
Until now. ...
Recently, an acquaintance explained the way the brain forms memories.
She asked me to close my eyes and imagine the first time I ever rode a
roller coaster. I laughed nervously and opened my eyes quickly. My
friend knew that certain experiences become memories that
are so powerful that they are indelibly inked into our subconscious.
Sometimes
these memories are pleasant; other times, terrifying. The common thread
is that
recalling memories make an experience so real that we feel
that we're right in that adventure, all over
again. ...
Regular Paper Doll
readers know I write often about the importance of filing, of making
sure that you've got a place for all your papers and aren't letting
floozies
take over your life.
As a professional organizer,
and previously in my career as a TV program director (when I was
TV Doll), I've
always reveled in the joy of creating order from chaos with clearly
labeled, standing-at-attention file folders, neatly embraced by sturdy
hanging folders. OK, maybe not reveled...but certainly enjoyed. For my
own use, a good filing system is as essential to my happiness as George
Clooney and Coffee
Crisp candy bars. ...
In a world of 420-character Facebook updates and 140-character tweets,
it's easy to feel that we modern-day writers invented brevity. The
truth, however, is that we're about 120 years behind the original
micro-bloggers.
In a century before text messaging and email, in eras before faxes, and in epochs before telephone calls that didn't require the shepherding and chaperoning of a long distance operator, there was a fast, semi-affordable way to get urgent messages across vast continents and oceans. Engagements were announced and wedding parties were congratulated, tragedies reported and inquiries made, all in a staccato priced-by-the-word, unpunctuated language of a hazy, far-off time. ...
No matter how much technology we have or how often we invoke the
philosophy of a paperless society, I don't believe we'll ever get past
the appeal of paper mail for personal correspondence. Sure, we've
talked about how companies like Zumbox can make it possible
for us to receive paper mail digitally, but there's still something
delightful about walking out to the mailbox and finding a personal
letter. ...
Longtime readers of Paper Doll know that I have
a love-hate relationship with small pieces of
paper. Too often, people
scribble notes on the corners of napkins, on the backs of envelopes and
on sticky notes, without any workable system for displaying, preserving
or accessing the information they've compiled. In a very early
Paper Doll post, Stay Far
From Floozies: Avoiding the Loose Paper Trap, I coined the notion that random pieces of loose paper, like persons of loose morals, were floozies, and I've railed against them ever since.
...
When I help clients sort and purge their excess paper, a trend emerges. A major source of paper clutter, not to mention a slow environmental assault, comes from the web articles they print in hopes of reading later when there's more time. Whether read or not, even if the story is out of date or the topic ceases to matter, the client will hesitate to let go of it, as if committing ideas to paper has somehow made them more valuable or sacred. And so, the piles rise. ...
Julie Bestry, President of Best Results Organizing in Chattanooga, TN, is a Certified Professional Organizer®, speaker and author. Julie helps overwhelmed individuals and businesses save time and money, reduce stress and increase productivity through new organizational skills and systems.
Internet Marketing For Solopreneurs Everything I learned about marketing online, I learned from Biana Babinksy at Avocado Consulting at her amazing MarketingSalad.com
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