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paper clutter

My college degree is a B.S. in Dietetics and for the first part of my career I worked in the areas of clinical, management and community dietetics. The majority of my career I have spent coordinating community education programs, teaching wellness programs and managing several departments.

For many years, three boxes of dietetics files have resided in my basement. As part of my basement journey, I needed and wanted to tackle these boxes. I am pleased to say that I am down to one box of current references and educational materials.

Over the years I have periodically tackled those boxes and actually at one time had a total of five file drawers for my dietetics references so I had already gotten rid of some of the papers. But when I approached the project this time it was with the realization that I was never going to do clinical dietetics or manage a kitchen or teach diabetes education programs again. So it was different. It was different because I no longer felt the need to keep my files “just in case”. I realized I was holding on to some of those reference files just to be prepared in case I was asked a question related to the field of dietetics or had to jump into a different job or role I would have some tools at the ready. [click to continue…]

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I have more progress to report. I have handled the following from my basement project list:

I have emptied two storage boxes of records/files that are intermediate storage. These are items that I will reference multiple times a year, but not weekly and no more than once a month. I decided to move these to the basement instead of keep them in the office closet along with a four drawer file cabinet they were previously stored in. It was taking up valuable real estate in my home office (extra bedroom).

I tossed a grocery bag full of reference material that I had piled for filing and intended for that same file cabinet. I recycled the papers since I hadn’t used any of them during the year they were in the pile.

I also made the conscious decision to purge anytime the four drawers of the file cabinet get full or minimally once a year. [click to continue…]

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Creating Your Filing System

April 14, 2009

Why filing systems don’t work: • You are trying to adapt someone else’s system. • You have set up a very complex system (maybe color coded and too many small categories). • Your file cabinet is not in a convenient location. • You are trying to keep too much to start with (records versus references). [...]

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Records Versus References

April 11, 2009

I am sure you have heard the statistic that 80% of what is filed is never looked at again. Do you know the difference between papers that are references and those that are records? Learning the difference can save a lot of work and maybe a few trees in the process. Records are papers that [...]

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The Home Office of Your Dreams

April 7, 2009

I recently posted about handling your papers as they come into your home as a way to conquer paper clutter. In thinking about what information I wanted to provide next I went through a long laundry list of potential topics. And the winner is setting up a home office. Once you have a handle on [...]

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More Paper Clutter Control Techniques

March 31, 2009

I could spend days writing about conquering paper pile ups. And I will continue to share bits and pieces in future posts. I did want to share a few more techniques now that you have your incoming mail under control. In order to stay on top of paper and prevent it from piling up: When [...]

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