NEAT & SIMPLE LIVING

Organizing Paper - Part 1 - The Issue of Having Too Much Paper

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BONUS!  Listen to my Audio podcast of
this article

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In the majority of American homes, managing paper is one of the biggest sources of clutter-related stress.  As a Professional Organizer, everyone I meet asks me questions about paper.  80% of the calls I get are about paper. Why is paper so difficult to organize?

In this new series on organizing paper, we’ll explore deeper paper organizing issues including the psychology of our relationship with paper. I’ll offer suggestions on ways to relate to your paper differently so that you can take back control. I’ll also be discussing how to sort paper and create systems for keeping it organized so that you can find it when you need it.

VOLUME

The first reason paper is so overwhelming to organize is this: SHEER VOLUME!  The amount of paper that comes into our homes daily is increasing all the time.  In fact, we get more mail in a single day than our grandparents got in an entire year! Add to that the paper we acquire from school, work, vacations, etc. and if you hold on to even half of it, you have the makings of a serious paper crisis on your hands.

Personally, even after getting off the junk mail lists, I recycle or shred 90% of the paper that comes into my home.  And I still have 3 file drawers and several binders full of actively used paper.

In researching my upcoming book on paper, I counted over 35 types of paper we have to organize.  And each of them gets organized in different ways!  There are also at least 5 -10 and sometimes literally hundreds of choices of tools to organize each of the 35 types of paper.  No wonder there aren’t any existing comprehensive books on the subject of organizing paper.  There are, of course, hundreds of books that include tips on organizing paper - but many of them contradict each other.  The thing is, all of these tips may work for some people but may not work for you.  For more tips to help you make better paper organizing choices, check out my free 30 page e-book on home office organizing.

For now, let's focus on what you can do immediately to start taking charge of the amount of paper coming into your life. Here is one of my best tips:

***Get off the mailing lists!***

Receiving less mail will save you so much time. It will greatly reduce the stress of sorting it out and trying to decide what to do with it all. It will save wear and tear on your shredder too.  It could even help your town reduce the cost of recycling. 

FACT:  $320 million of local taxes are used to dispose of unsolicited mail each year.  If we all made an effort to stop the mail from coming in, we could help keep property taxes from rising so quickly! 

Here are some very effective and easy to use links for getting off Junk Mail Lists:

www.directmail.com/directory/mail_preference/
www.optoutprescreen.com
www.ecologicalmail.org
www.41pounds.org

In Part 2, we’ll continue this exploration of how we can reframe the way we relate to our paper by looking at our emotional attachments to paper.  See you then!
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Copyright © 2007 Ariane Benefit

REPRINT INFO

If you would like to reprint this article on your blog or other publication please email or call for permission and send me a link to how it appears.  Also be sure to include my bio as shown below.  Thanks!

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Ariane Benefit, M.S.Ed, Organizing Consultant is the founder of Neat & Simple professional organizers. She specializes in helping people create the homes & offices of their dreams! As an organizing coach, she guides people in clarifying priorities and making the difficult decisions needed to conquer clutter, change habits, and take charge of their lives.  She is also the author of the popular organizing and decluttering blog, Neat & Simple Living, and a 30 page e-book on home office organizing.

Help! I'm a hoarder - Verdict: Helpful - but could have been much more helpful.

Thanks to Dr. Amie Ragan's latest post, I learned that there is a new TV show coming up on Wednesday, September 19th, at 7:00 p.m. CST. called Help! I'm a Hoarder.

I watched the show and was glad to see it was educational vs exploitative and did help to enlighten the general public about the causes and treatment options available. I hope it will foster great compassion and better treatment of hoarders in the legal system.

I think they missed out on a great opportunity, however, to make hoarders and their families as well as professionals who work with hoarders aware of the recent and few self-help books on the subject such as:

Buried in Treasures: Help for Compulsive Acquiring, Saving, and Hoarding

Overcoming Complusive Hoarding

They could also have easily promoted organizations like www.NSGCD.org and websites such as:

• OCD Foundation's Hoarding Website
• Children of Hoarders group
• Squalor Survivors 
• www.messies.com
• Hoarding Fact Sheet - Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health
• New York City Hoarding Website 
• Shopaholics Anonymous
• Stopping Overshopping

See more resources for hoarders

HYPNOTHERAPY
I do feel hypnotherapy is a promising approach to dealing with the underlying subconscious & emotional elements of the condition.  But I was concerned that they made it seem somewhat like a "magic cure". Some hoarding behavior has a genetic component and therefore may not be treatable with hypnotherapy. 

REPATTERNING
Holographic or Resonance Repatterning is an unfortunately complicated sounding name for an alternative treatment modality that actually may have great promise in helping clutterers and hoarders who are resistant to change due to underlying or subconscious belief systems.  I recently attended a group session that remarkably helped a group of addicts overcome some very self-limiting beliefs.  Because I believe many types of hoarding are actually addictive behaviors (in that they are attempts to self-soothe, manage stress, affect mood, and avoid "withdrawal" pain), I'm meeting with Ellen Shapiro a Certified Repatterning Practioner here in Montclair, NJ to discuss creating a resource / service / workshop for clutterers that integrates learning organizing skills with exploration of beliefs & using repatterning techniques to help people release their clutter more easily.   If you are interested in learning more, repatterning sessions can also be done by phone.

VALUE
The greatest value of the show in my opinion is that it will hopefully help reduce the shame hoarders feel so that they are more willing to seek help for their problem. 

FINDING THE RIGHT PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZER / PROFESSIONAL TO WORK WITH HOARDERS
Working with hoarders is such a specialty in the organizing industry that I almost think the professional organizers who do that ought to have a different title.  Not sure what it would be, but really the skill set difference is ENORMOUS.   I was concerned that the show did not mention the NSGCD Referral Site for around 1000 organizing professionals specializing in chronic disorganization. NSGCD members are a subset of the over 6000 professional organizers out there. Among the NSGCD members there are even fewer that specialize in extreme Levels 3-5 hoarding.  Personally, I don't feel that I'm yet qualified to work with that group. I work with Levels 1 and 2 on the Clutter Hoarding Scale.

I have started a Compulsive Hoarding Service Provider & Professional Organizer Referral Directory on this blog for practioners who specialize in helping level 3 - 5 extreme hoarders.  If you are a professional who works with hoarders or have worked with a professional(s) who helped you, please submit their names and contact info here.

Thanks!

Help! I'm a hoarder. New TV show

I just learned about a TV special coming up on TLC on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 7:00 p.m. CST. called Help! I'm a Hoarder.  I'm programming it into my DVR . 

I hope they treat the show's participants with dignity and really getting into the complexities of the problem and discuss the latest treatments.

Related Posts on this Blog

Help for Hoarders, Clutterers & Compulsive Shoppers

Overcoming Hoarding Tendencies with Dr. Randy Frost & Sandra Felton

Supporting Someone Who Lives in Squalor - Squalor Survivors & Children & Family of Hoarders

Surviving & Overcoming Living in Squalor

True Story: One Family's Experience With the Devasting Effects of Prolonged Clutter

How Compulsive Hoarding Affects Families

Are you an Article Clipping Addict?

If you clip lots of articles from newspapers and magazines, this guest post by Professional Organizer, Lorie Morrero is for you.  It provides alternatives to clipping that save you time and space in your home. It may even cause you to rethink how much you clip in the first place.

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Do you need Clippers Anonymous?

GUEST POST By Lorie Marrero, Author of the Clutter Diet

Are you compelled to clip articles from magazines and other reading material and save them for later, or share them with your friends and family?  Is it becoming a problem?

Clipping for yourself:  The main question is, do you have an organized system for FINDING the clippings later?  If you do not have a reliable way of organizing and filing these items, you might as well not have them. I would like to suggest to you that almost everything is indexed online now.  Virtually all major magazines have indexed their articles, and if you'll allow the possibility, they can be responsible for holding this information for you.  I would recommend taking a few of your clippings and "testing" trying to find that information on Google, or directly on the magazine's website.  My guess is that you will be successful almost 100% of the time.  This may give you the confidence to drastically reduce your clipping habits.  It's very time-consuming to handle this paper and file it and keep it, and it takes up a lot of space.  Remember, you do not need to create your own personal library when there are literally libraries and search engines and others that do nothing but index information for you.

A helpful tool:  A PDF maker.  PDFs are a universal type of document that almost anyone can read on any computer.  You can "print" a web page to save as a PDF document, using Adobe Acrobat Professional software or a less expensive "knock-off" product like Cute PDF.  Saving a PDF of something you like online can allow you to organize it into your personal files on your hard drive, rather than printing something out and keeping it in your paper files.

Clipping for others:  The good news is that you are probably a very caring "people person" who really values your relationships.  That is great!  Let's make sure you're doing the best thing for the people you care about helping.

First, ask yourself honestly if this person truly wants the information.  In my work as a Professional Organizer, I have a client who is a very well-intentioned "big sister." She is always wanting to send articles about health and wellness to her parents and siblings, along with parenting advice and similar items.  We were able to broach the subject that perhaps these types of articles could be perceived badly as unsolicited advice, and that you have to be careful about the unspoken messages you're sending along with the material. 

Secondly, always ask yourself (again) if this information is available online.  People nowadays would greatly prefer a link they can click on, read, and move on--rather than adding to their pile of paper they feel they must read and respond to.  E-mail makes it much easier to share this information conveniently.  It's also much less time-consuming for you.  The client I have mentioned above often makes 5-6 copies of an article to send out to various family members, so imagine the time savings of doing that vs. just addressing an e-mail to 5-6 people.

Hopefully this information gives you a different perspective to help relieve your clipping burden.

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Lorie Marrero is a Professional Organizer and creator of The Clutter Diet, an innovative, affordable online program for home organization. Lorie’s site helps members lose “Clutter-Pounds” from their homes by providing online access to her team of organizers. Lorie writes something insanely practical every few days or so in the Clutter Diet Blog. She lives in Austin, TX, where her company has provided hands-on organizing services to clients since 2000.

Sentimental Treasures or Clutter? 8 Ways to Sort Through Your Sentimental Things

Sentimental things are probably the most difficult kinds of things to let go.  It's the stuff that was part of our history, part of who we used to be and what made us who we are today.

For me, pretty much everything my husband and I keep squirreled away in our attic is sentimental. Some people would call the stuff in our attic clutter, but is it really clutter?  I think the first step in choosing what to let go of is to be really clear about what clutter means to you. To me, it's NOT clutter simply because you don't use it.

I determine what clutter is by looking at through a cost-benefit lens.  A kind of pain vs. pleasure scale.  How much is it costing me or how much pain is it causing me to keep it, versus how much benefit or pleasure I get from it. It's a personal decision for everyone. 

So, for example if I really need more space in my garage to hold things I use, then I have to be consider letting go of things that I love but I haven't been using like my motorcycle.  It has been sold to someone who really uses and enjoys it.  It was a really hard decision to make - I hugged it and then cried watching it drive off.  Letting it go - felt like I was having an out of body experience - like a part of me was torn away forever - and I still feel a pang every time I go in my garage and don't see it there. But I lived through it, and the extra space in our garage feels awesome and has made our lives easier and simpler. I don't regret it at all,  In fact I'm very proud of myself for letting go and letting someone else experience the joy I once got from it.   

This guest post by Jeri Dansky provides some excellent tips to help you sort through your sentimental treasures and decide what to keep and what to pass on.

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8 Ways to Sort Through the Sentimental Clutter

GUEST POST By Jeri Dansky, Author of Jeri's Organizing and Decluttering News blog.

The souvenirs from your last 10 trips. The Christmas cards from 1998. The prize-winning science project your son or daughter did. Your grandmother's china. How do you sort through all of this, and decide what to keep? Here are some guidelines to help.

1. Decide to honor the past, but not be chained down by it. And realize that disposing of an object does not in any way reflect on your respect and love for the person who gave it to you, or who owned it before. If we don't ever dispose of things from our past, we leave no room in our spaces for the present and the future.

2. Be selective; consider employing some rules of thumb. For example, you may decide you don't need to keep any Christmas cards that don't have a personal note or a photo. (And please don't save cards from your newspaper carrier, your dentist, and people you don't particularly like - or even remember!) Watching and listening to my clients, it's usually easy to tell which items are the keepers - they are the ones that bring on the big smiles or the laughter.

3. Consider setting limits. Limits can be numeric (I will only save x number of my child's drawings from this year) or space-related (I will only save what fits in this box). And if you are deciding about your children's artwork or schoolwork, it's often wise to involve them in making the choices.

4. Consider space-saving alternatives. Sometimes taking a picture of a bulky item will preserve the memory just fine, and you can let the item itself move on. I horrified a friend by ripping up my high school yearbook - but I really only wanted about 10 pages, not the whole heavy thing.

Wednesday Wisdom - On Sacrificing Clutter in Order to Have What We Truly Need

“To receive that which is worth having,
It may be necessary to lose everything else.”

- Helene Bonet

Garage - BEFORE letting go of clutter

Garage - AFTER letting go of the clutter
my client can now have what she truly needed -
her car parked in the garage!

This is some of what my client had to "lose"
in order to park her car in the garage
for the first time in 30 years.
 

RELATED POST: 
This is the same home featured in this post with photos in July:

http://blog.neatandsimple.com/2007/07/organizing-and-.html

"See you" when I return from vacation!

Photo by Ariane Benefit - Copyright - All Rights Reserved.
Do not use without permission.

Check out these Top Lifehacking, Productivity & Frugal Living Lists!

These are some of the best compilations of blogs covering Lifehacking, Productivity & Frugal Living!  Okay, so yeah.  I'm a little biased.  They all list Neat & Simple Living on them!  But that only makes them better lists right?  tee hee : ) 

Seriously, check out all the great blogs they list! You won't regret it!

From WhitePapers.org
Personal Productivity Required Reading List: 100 Kick-butt Lifehacking Blogs

From The Frugal Panda
Top 50 Frugality Bloggers

From Zen Habits
The Top 50 Productivity Blogs (most of which you haven’t heard about)

From Personal Development Demands Success
The Personal Development List

Update 9/9/07  - I'm reproducing the Personal Development list here by request!

It's extremely long so, click on the continue reading link to see it....

May all your productivity goals come true!