It can be discouraging and depressing to live in clutter. Clutter has a way of multiplying, so it's no longer just that little bit of clutter you left after paying the bills. Now, there are newsletters and magazines and CD's that you didn't have the time to put away. You want to read the magazines before you throw them out and you want to record the bill payments. What can you do?
Clutter Tip 1: Sometimes Outside Help is Valuable, and Sometimes Not
How overwhelming is the clutter to you? Do you have a way of dealing with it, or are you without a plan? Sometimes this is the case when there is limited storage in your home.
Bringing in family or friends can sometimes be a great help. They see clutter as clutter where you might see it as important. This is a help if it truly is clutter. It is not such a help if you need a record of your business luncheon receipts, but not your old grocery receipts.
Clutter Tip 2: How long do you have to hold on to old bills?
Whether paid or unpaid, a bill is not important once it's 90 days old. After 90 days, you've had at least two other, updated bills. The old information just isn't important unless you have one credit card for business. Since these purchases will all be tax deductible, this is a useful record. Save these. Discard all others.
Clutter Tip 3: How long do you hold on to magazines?
My recommendation is that you read a new magazine the week that it arrives. Then, unless you have a waiting room for patients, discard it or donate it to the lunchroom of your job after tearing off the label. This way, it doesn't become clutter in your space.
Clutter Tip 4: How to store books when you have no more shelf space
It's easy to make a simple bookshelf and I recommend this. It won't look like a built in shelf, but it will hold a lot of books. You can paint it to match the molding, to contrast with your wall color by making it lighter or darker, or to blend in with your wall color. Use a semi gloss or gloss as these are more durable and don't stain.
Or, you can hang shelves directly on the wall using brackets held on with butterfly screws or one of the other kinds that involves drilling a hole and putting in a plastic holder before you screw in the screw. Books are fairly heavy, so I use two brackets for a three or four foot shelf. For a longer shelf, I would use three brackets.
Sometimes people stack bricks and run a shelf across the bricks, and then stack some more bricks and run another shelf. These are quick and strong, but it will always look like a dorm room solution. Simply stacking books next to a chair is not a storage solution, but clutter.
Books are useful and beautiful, and only become clutter when you can't get to them or find them when you need them.
What is Clutter?
Perhaps it's important at this point to define clutter. If you can't run a vacuum or dust all your tables and counters without moving "stuff", you have clutter. You might have a collection of antique angels or some other theme. If it is sitting on a table and not on a shelf, it's clutter.
Now, some people have kitchen equipment out all the time on their counter. They use it often and it takes a great deal of their time to put it away and take it out again.
That is the definition. Clutter takes your time. It takes time to move it out of the way and it takes time when you can't find what you are looking for.
It is not clutter if it saves you time in the kitchen. But, if you have to move the food processor every time you make coffee or rice which you do on a daily basis, it has become clutter. Put the food processor away to make room for the equipment that you use daily unless you also use the food processor daily.
Clutter is ugly. If a piece of equipment is ugly, put it away except when you are using it. There is no reason to make your kitchen look crowded and unattractive for a piece of equipment that you use twice a month. Put it away.
Perhaps you leave the bills out until you pay them. This is a fairly common filing system. You would do better to buy an attractive accordion envelope to keep in your office area. Let that be the "To Be Paid" envelope. Sometimes they are alphabetized, and sometimes they have numbers, 1 to 31 to correspond with the days of the month. This is a useful system for tracking their due dates and it keeps them organized and off of your coffee table.
When I was working as a manager in a large organization, my immediate supervisor took a course in time management and learned to clear her desk at the end of the day. That way, each morning she would come in to a clear desk and put one project on her desk at a time.
I didn't subscribe to that system because I always had 30 or so projects going at any one time. All 30 were on my desk in case a customer called about theirs, or in case one of my providers called to alert me of trouble or delay. This worked while I had only 30 projects. But, sometimes they grew to 100 or more.
I finally got a large file cabinet that fit nicely right beside my desk, and learned to put them in or take them out as needed.
Clutter Tip 5: Are File Cabinets Worth the Money and the Space?
File Cabinets are useful only if you use them. I have several friends who are historians and they keep papers, newspapers, and articles that have historical value. These have to be filed and they use them often.
Filing old bills is not a good use of the file cabinet. If you do not go into the file cabinet for information as often as you put stuff into it, you are just using it to delay throwing it out. A small cabinet for your equipment information, insurances and tax related information is all most homes will ever need. In most cases, an accordion file will be enough.
Clutter Tip 6: How to Use the Electronic File
Computers now come with calendars, a word processing program and a number (such as Excel) or financial program (such as Money or Quicken). If yours didn't come with one, it is well worth buying it.
Keep your due dates on the calendar. You can even keep track of your workouts, and I have used it to keep track of the way I was spending my cash. Quicken is marvelous for keeping track of all the expenditures from your checking account. You can download directly from most on-line banking systems. It will sort your expenses (debit card, credit card and checking expenditures) for you into categories. This is most useful at tax time and, from experience, I can tell you that the IRS auditor is happy to work from your Quicken record when they have questions.
Important documents can be scanned and filed on your hard drive, or an external drive. If you don't have a great grasp of setting up file cabinets on your computer, set up folders on your mail server and email the documents as attachments to yourself. Then, put them in the appropriate file. You won't need to search at home and you'll have access to them if you need them while at work.
For additional ideas on organizing your life, please visit: http://www.mindbridge-loa.com/law-of-attraction-coaching-article.html
Nancy J. Stremmel is the co-owner and developer of:
http://www.Mindbridge-LOA.com the compendium of information on the Law of Attraction. She is a writer, licensed Social Worker, educator, artist and therapist. She believes that everyone can make the Law of Attraction work for them.
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