Four Steps to Eliminate Paper Clutter in Your Home
I had a moment last week I can only describe as the epitome of “adulting.”
A good friend and her four kids were at our apartment home for an afternoon play date.
We sat down over rooibos tea lattes, excited to catch up, while our kids played. We’d talked about summer travel and school plans, when our conversation turned to a topic we both began to “nerd out” on: paper clutter.
Mid-conversation, I laughed and said something along the lines of, “Listen to us! You know you’re adulting when you get this excited about systems to manage paper.”
She laughed and agreed, explaining that when the paper in her home was in check, her home felt so much better. And that was worth the excitement.
It’s true—any home, regardless of where you are in your journey to live with less, has as a common clutter culprit: paper.
As digital as our world has become, paper is still unavoidable. From birth certificates and social security cards to the weekly grocery ads to children’s artwork to yet another operating manual, paper accumulation is ongoing.
In fact, the average American home still processes a paper stack as high as a two-story house every year.
Without a system to manage incoming and existing papers, even the most streamlined home can feel like a tornado hit by the end of the week.
Paper clutter is not only increasing our stress levels at home, but it’s also reducing our productivity and focus. Paper piles in eyesight have the power to put your mind in “to-do” mode, taking your attention away from the present moment. Plus, we lose our most precious commodity—time—by looking for misplaced papers.
A recent survey called “The Weight of Paper in the 21st Century American Home,” conducted by Organize 365 revealed that nearly 70% of millennials say they are unable to find important papers when needed, compared to 50% of baby boomers and 56% of Generation X.
Without question, unmanaged paper is a problem.
In her book, The Paper Solution, Lisa Woodruff presents the following statistics about paper:
- The average office worker still comes in contact with 10,000 pieces of paper every year.
- The US postal service delivers over 484 million pieces of mail each day.
- The majority of the 4 million tons of junk mail Amerians receive annually ends up in landfills.
So how do we keep paper from taking over our homes and lives?
Here is a four-step process to regain control of the paper in your home (as described in the book The Paper Solution):
1. The Big Purge
The first step in managing paper clutter in your home is to let go of the paper you no longer use and need. Woodruff proposes that although 85% of all the paper we have in our lives can be either recycled or shredded, most people can declutter 20-50% of their paper in this first step. Paper can make us feel secure and often has sentimental value—letting go can be a challenge and bring up tough emotions. For most of us, it won’t happen overnight.
To get started, designate a work space specifically for paper decluttering. Set up five boxes labeled: To be sorted, saved papers, shred, recycle, and trash.
Grab papers from their usual homes and place them in the “to be sorted” box. Then, handle each piece of paper and ask yourself “Should I keep this?” If yes, place it in the “saved papers” box. If no, then place it in the shred, recycle or trash box. The act of moving papers from their usual home (filing cabinets, piles on countertops) helps you see them in a new light and makes it more likely you’ll save fewer pieces.
2. The Sunday basket
Once you’ve decluttered your paper, you’ll need to implement a system to keep paper clutter from returning. Enter, the Sunday basket.
This basket serves as a designated holding place for all your actionable “to dos” (including: mail, receipts, forms to complete, bills to pay, letters to read, and notes you write to yourself). This centrally located basket eliminates the piles that form around your house and on your kitchen counters. Plus, you’ll always know where to find a paper when needed.
Then, on Sunday (or whatever day is best for you—I choose Saturday), go through all the items in the basket. Try to go through the basket at the same time each week. In Woodruff’s experience this habit takes about 6 weeks to form. (You can actually begin this step anytime. You don’t have to wait until your paper decluttering is complete to store active papers this way).
3. Make your Binders
Papers from your “saved papers” box and papers that are no longer active, but still need to be kept and referenced, get put into binders. Woodruff recommends using slash pocket folders to hold your paper within the binders.
According to Woodruff, 90% of filing cabinets could be replaced with the following binders:
- Household reference binder – A binder for all papers for your physical house (warranties, manuals, insurance paperwork, instructions on how to change the water filter). If you sold your house, what info would the new homeowner need to have? Keep it here.
- Household operations binder – This binder holds everything that makes your family unique (and what you would not give to a new home owner). This could include pet information, holiday ideas, travel information, car information, and paper related to community activities.
- Financial organizing binder – A binder holding everything needed for someone to act as a financial power of attorney on your behalf.
- Medical organizing binder – A home for all documentation needed to make important medical decisions.
- School Memory binder – This binder contains your children’s favorite artwork or school papers.
You can also scan any important documents that you want to save digitally at this point.
4. Maintain your systems
Once you set up your binder system, some papers will still need to be archived (birth certificates, social security cards, tax returns, passports, etc). You can use a bankers box, file box, or even a portable safe to archive important papers.
Your paper management system will require maintenance decluttering, just like other areas of your home. Go through your Sunday basket weekly and declutter your binders four times a year, with every season.
If you feel like paper clutter is taking over your home, act today. Grab a basket, go throughout your home, and place every piece of paper you find in that basket. Place the basket on your kitchen counter (you can keep it out of sight once you’ve developed the habit of going through it weekly). Now make arrangements to devote an entire day to paper purging. You could do it bit by bit, but do you really want to be decluttering forever? Take a sick day, get a full day of child care—it’s an investment in your productivity and peace of mind at home.
If you want more guidance and inspiration on decluttering paper, I highly recommend reading Woodruff’s book The Paper Solution.
Now is the time to take back control of your home. Why not dive into paper decluttering today?
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Julia Ubbenga is a freelance journalist whose teachings on minimalism, simplicity, and intentional living have reached thousands of people worldwide through her blog. Julia practices what she preaches in her Kansas City apartment home with her husband, two extremely lively young daughters, and one-year-old son. You can also find her on Instagram.
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