Monday, December 30, 2019

The giant chronological paper box(es)

A while back, we bought a book called something like, Organization for people with ADHD.  We bought it because my sons (and maybe my husband) are ADHD, and because Organization is Me.   Somehow, I can't find the book anymore . . .

 [. . . pause to acknowledge the irony of losing a book on organization . . . ]

. . .  but there are two really helpful things that we learned from the book, and fortunately I haven't lost the knowledge.  

Here's one of those two really helpful things.  

To help get rid of paper in your home office (or wherever you take care of paperwork at home), don't have a tiny little paper recycling box that you empty regularly into a larger recycling bin.  No, instead, have a LARGE paper recycling box, one that holds months and months of paper.  
A large box of mixed paper (glossy, catalogs, whatever),
and a large box of office paper.
And then, in your head, don't think of it as a "recycling" box for things you're getting rid of.  Instead, think of it as the place where you keep all of your outgoing papers, chronologically sorted.   This mindset allows for easier decisions.   Do I get rid of this envelope from my newspaper carriers, or will I need it again to send them a thank-you note?   Either way, into the box it goes.  If I need to look at again, I can find it at the appropriate layer.  It's chronologically sorted, naturally!

This giant-box thing hasn't yet affected my son's life, since he doesn't really have much paper (I file all his paperwork myself, because . . . well, because his dad and I are still the ones dealing with the bureaucracies that are involved in his life).  But the giant-box system has made my own workspaces  easier places to work in this year, especially as I continue to set up my  Command Center in this new home -- with no shelves (yet), and with a FreeCycle filing cabinet showing up late in the fall, leaving much of the early months of the new house a very printer-paper-box-fueled state of paper affairs.

By the way, because of the way recycling works here, I actually have two large boxes: one for "mixed paper", and the other for printer paper.  I also have a small container for newspaper and cardboard (that, I empty out fairly regularly) and a box for "charity envelopes" -- which we save for the dOnnOr in August.  So I'm living a boxy kind of life.  I'm really looking forward to building some bookshelves next summer, just to get things off the floor!  (Well, and to get my poetry books back from my office at work).

But back to the paper boxes.  The book (did I mention we lost it?  and that it's about organizing?) suggests that this recycling box be something beautiful, so you appreciate having it around in the office.  I will probably get to the "beautiful" someday, or at least something funky and aesthetically pleasing, but you can see from the above, we're not there yet.  Which is okay by me; I'm a huge fan of cardboard boxes.  

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