<p>Cleaning house for a big party is a great way to get rid of stuff. But does anyone else take that one remaining stack of stuff and stash it somewhere - only to find it weeks later? And then 99% of the stuff in that precious stack gets thrown away!</p>
<p>OK, I’m a packrat too, so I can’t help you get rid of the stuff. But I can help with the “stack” problem. It won’t solve the problem, but it will improve things. </p>
<p>Buy some sort of vertical file holder and some file folders and put them in the kitchen where your “stack” has been. Get some labels and label each folder with a very general category - for you the best might be with the name of each family member. Now when stuff comes in, put it in the appropriate file that matches the type of paper. Now you have a set of neat, organized files instead of a stack. </p>
<p>ALSO get a cardboard file storage box and put it in your garage or corner of your home office or some other out of the way place. Whenever a file in the kitchen stack starts to get kind of full, go through it to see if there is stuff that can go into the recycling bin or trash to thin it down. But once a file becomes too thick – you are going to replace it with a more current file and put the older stuff in its own file in the garage box, with the same category name PLUS the date when you created that file. Probably if you haven’t needed a paper for the past 3 weeks you aren’t going to need it – but my system will more likely give you room for several months worth of stuff in each file. If you always put the new stuff at the front of each file, then your files will be roughly in order by date – so when swapping stuff out to the “old” file you will be able to just grab all the stuff from the back. </p>
<p>Now you have a small set of files in the kitchen with relatively current stuff, and one more box in the garage accumulating older stuff, in files with dates on it. Best thing to do in the long run will probably be to put the oldest files in the back, newest at the front. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, since your husband doesn’t want more file boxes in the garage - you can start to get rid of stuff from boxes that look old. Make it a project to just go through one box at a time and shift as much stuff as possible from box to recycling bin. There is very little OLD paper that you need to keep. A few items, maybe. You will probably find that 95% of the stuff in the oldest boxes can be tossed. If you are courageous, you can just get a shredder and don’t bother to look at the stuff, just shred. </p>
<p>This system is not the best in the world, but its pretty easy to implement and stick with, and in the end you will be able to find stuff by approximating how old it is. </p>
<p>Ideally, the type of paperwork that you know you need to keep forever should bypass that system and have its own safe place. Stuff like your kid’s high school diploma or vaccination records don’t really belong in the clutter pile.</p>
<p>Great ideas.
What do you do with kids school work? I am actually digging in the school boxes for one of D’s HS courses work. I want to compare the class syllabus with the current one (that D is taking). I can’t find that year’s box, of course. In looking through the old ones I can tell there is too much saved. Do you toss everything except original, witty papers?</p>
<p>KarenColleges: Kids school work… I tossed everything except for the things I thought they’d like to see later. I have their long detailed evaluations from pre-school and then one or two things from each year. It all fits in ONE book box.</p>
<p>I scan receipts and guarantees for items and then toss the actual paper.</p>
<p>I did sign up for Carbonite. My husband has used them once when his computer died and it was SO nice not to listen to him scream.</p>
<p>Last summer I went to my in-laws house to help them clear out the paper. They are hoarders.</p>
<p>I shredded for days, and as I was going through the paper found quite a number of important papers. Family history stuff, bank papers, photographs, combined with junk mail that was years old. I shredded the important stuff that identity thieves might enjoy, and tossed the rest. 50 gigantic hefty bags later, I barely made a dent.</p>
<p>All along, I was creating a few filing boxes with the important papers and making a system that would work for them. I honestly don’t know how they functioned with their system.</p>
<p>It was kind of fun to see some of the cancelled checks for things from my husband’s childhood - but really, did they think they needed that from 30 years ago? </p>
<p>Paper accumulates pretty quickly. I am making a concerted effort in my own home to begin the thinning of the piles of paper and files. You have to find a system that works for you.</p>
<p>My advice is to start small. Take manageable chunks. Deal with one pile or box a day. Scan papers as you go. Backup. Repeat until you are done. :)</p>
<p>Whew, just reading this is making me a little tense. We live in a small condo, but there is a basement. I like nothing more than to purge things and clean out clutter. My younger D keeps everything. As some point when she graduates from college we are going to have a heart to heart about all of her things. I am thinking of getting estimates on off site storage and telling her she will have to foot that bill. There is just tooooo much stuff for our small condo (where I have my home office). Okay, I am going to get off this thread before I start thinking of all the stuff that should be tossed.</p>
<p>I recently spent three years going through my parent’s house. My dad died and my mom was moving in with us. Working with my mom was no joy- every item had special meaning to her. And she ended up filling my garage with stuff she just could not part with. </p>
<p>Their garage was filled with papers that my dad collected- all the way back to WWII. I kept some of the letters and memorabilia, but tossed a lot. </p>
<p>In my house, my mom now gets upset with the paper clutter that seems to accumulate on the kitchen table. She has taken to filling paper bags with it and then leaving them for me to sort. Needless to say, I just shove them into a closet. I guess I learned a few bad habits during my childhood.</p>
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<p>Two words: Quicken and Turbo Tax. These software programs basically eliminate the need for paper files.</p>
<p>I still keep a paper copy of my tax just in case. In fact, I filed everything and save 10-year worth of stuff. Last year some law firms asked if I had purchase one of the stocks in their litigation with a brokerage firm. I found my statements and provided to them. Net me a nice chunk of money.</p>
<p>I went through my Mom’s attic and sorted all the kids’ growing-up papers for my brothers and me. After glancing each blooming page and tossing MOST into a dumpster, I created one worthy large box for each sibling to cart off to our homes. It was fun to see it once, and probably will stay untouched until our own kids find that box in our closets. When I found my parents’ love letters to my Dad overseas in WWII, I did not read those. I set them out for her, in a big long file beside her rocker, to sift through and dream. She liked that. The rest of that attic – it took days. Bank statements from l953? Puhlease. That was enough to inspire me to try to do better for my own kids.</p>
<p>What I learned is: Some things in a box of kid memorabilia are repetitive. As my big brother said to me, looking through his new/old box: "How many ways did my teachers say, “articulate; bad handwriting; needs to consider the feelings of others.” If I ever get to this task in my own home (now an empty nest), I’ll try to make one box for each child that represents a kind of cross-section of highlights. I’ll include a few things that remind they are not always perfect. I won’t save EVERY sports award or math certificate. They’ll get the idea after 5 of them, and don’t need 40 certificates to know, “hey I was good.” Also: a few representative drawings as little kids, not every scribble for every Mother’s Day or birthday. </p>
<p>This paper sorting of generations of sentimental memorabilia is my biggest burden. I keep in mind I’m lucky compared to someone who lost all in a fire or flood, or through parental disinterest. So that’s a perspective to keep in mind when I want to scream over the deep paper piles from of old. Or figure out which piece of loose, gold-sprayed macaroni goes with which child’s school craft poster.</p>
<p>When we have social guests over, that inspires H and me to spiff up the main rooms, with a last-minute toss into a junk box as the doorbell rings. But for a really deep cleaning/paper sorting I find a genuine family transition (kid off to college; parent downsizing to a condo or, sadly, dying) makes a lot of decisions of what to toss suddenly seem crystal clear.</p>
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<p>As I was pondering the boxes of old bills a couple weeks ago, I had an epiphany. I can’t think of ANY bill/statement that can’t be accessed online these days. Or, for that matter, proof of payment - cancelled checks are stored online by your bank (I don’t even receive the checks anymore, just an image). I’m now in the market for a good shredder. NO MORE will I save bills. I can’t imagine the storage space I just got back. :D</p>
<p>Now. If I could just get DH to stop saving EVERY empty box from every purchase. And, every magazine having anything to do with automobiles. I’m told you might need them, for reference one day…</p>
<p>When my mom died, we killed three shredders shredding all of the documents that had her SS number on them. THREE. She kept everything…taxes from thirty years ago…bills from that long ago. At one point she even made SIX copies of every bill “just in case you needed a copy”. </p>
<p>We keep hard copies of the bills we pay online for only one year. They easily fit in ONE drawer. Then they get shredded. Taxes we keep for 10 years. They get shredded. </p>
<p>Newspapers get tossed every week at the recyling center. Ditto magazines we have all read. Sometimes we hang onto them for a couple of months…but then they GO. </p>
<p>Clutter is clutter. We have plenty of it even WITH tossing the things we toss. </p>
<p>I think the best storage for the kids’ “collectiions” is under the bed storage boxes. We have one for each kiddo and it easily holds the art projects WORTH keeping (all of them are NOT worth keeping), report cards (not sure why I’m keeping those), school pictures, etc. </p>
<p>I guess the subject heading of this thread “to clutter or not” implies that clutter is a good thing. Please explain how that could be.</p>
<p>What I hated was when my mother and m-i-l decided to clean out and gave us all the stuff that was “ours.” Stuff I didn’t even know still existed, but now that I knew someone had saved it I felt guilty throwing it out. Stuff like the plaster mold of H’s teeth before he got braces… and checks my mom had written to pay for my dance classes in 1st grade. I managed to throw out most of it.</p>
<p>My m-i-l admitted that she found the sympathy cards from her mom’s funeral a few years ago, re-read them, knew she didn’t need to keep them, but couldn’t bring herself to throw them out. So she gave them to her brother. He read them and couldn’t toss them either. So he gave them to the other brother. They are sure that brother’s wife will toss them!</p>
<p>My boss at work is a pack rat, and doesn’t let me throw anything away. As a result, we can’t find the stuff we DO need. She wants to keep printouts of reports that are also stored online, I can’t convince her we don’t need the paper - it’s faster to look things up online.</p>
<p>thumper1: why would you need to shred documents that have a dead person’s SSN on them? Once you file the death report, that number can’t be used. Am I missing something?</p>
<p>I couldn’t read this entire thread. I hate clutter, and just reading about everyone’s is making it hard. to. breathe.</p>
<p>I did want to say that there are companies that relatively inexpensively will come shred stuff for you. They’ll either take it away and shred it at their office or do it on-site where you are.</p>
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<p>We were advised to do so by our lawyer…folks pick these things up and use them to set up identities…until they are “caught” because the SS number is dead.</p>
<p>I am very much enjoying this thread. It makes me laugh yet feel somewhat embarrassed when I look at the items piling up on my kitchen counter.</p>
<p>A large stockpot that I am avoiding putting away because it would require me to move some stuff around in my pantry, some college stuff, a jar of nuts that someone gave us as a hostess gift, “left over” mail, my lap top, calendar, theater tickets, a panoramic pix of my son’s senior class that he dropped there one day last week, an empty CD box and a zip lock bag full of potentially undeveloped film/disposable cameras that I pulled out of my junk drawer and two returned Christmas cards that need new addresses.</p>
<p>It would take maybe a max of 30 minutes to take care of this mess…but here I sit typing and there sits my pile!</p>
<p>One thing I will say…if I ever build another house, the ISLAND in the kitchen will also hold the cooktop…so that it CANNOT hold other “stuff”.</p>
<p>thumper, that’s too funny. I’ve never had papers in the kitchen. Now the huge dining room table I inherited from my great grandmother - that’s another matter - despite the fact that we eat on it every day.</p>
<p>Oh Mathmom…our dining room table is DH’s home office. Did I mention that he HAS a complete home office in our finished downstairs?</p>