I’m BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry, gals, that it took so long. This week was pretty intensive work wise with writing projects. Got most of that out of the way so I’m going to start throwing assignments back up here, as quickly as I can. I really want to be done with all this paper purging before the end of the month. I’m so sick of it all!

Challenge Step #2

A. Put Some New Systems in Place
Okay, my reasoning behind this is: you can purge all you want, but if you don’t start planning on how to deal with things as you clean them out, then it’s really going to do you very little good long-term.

So, look at your previous list. What is ONE THING you can set up/put in place RIGHT NOW, that would make one area easier to deal with? Also, after you right your idea down, mark down what parts of your list connect to that system idea? (see what I did below, it makes more sense when you see it.)

Okay, now that you have that system idea down? Yeah, go make up another one! No really. Don’t just stop at one good idea, do two!

B. Purge Active to Archived
Now, we’re going to do this step to make some ROOM! What papers/files/etc do you have and need to keep, but don’t NEED on a regular basis? I just recently bought a cheap file cabinet at the thrift store to create some “archived files” for myself. Why? I have no more room in my file cabinets in my office, for things I use on a regular basis – that’s part of my paper problem! So, this assignment is to go through your files and move things over to some “archived place” where they will be safe, but out of your way.

If you already have tons of files in storage somewhere and have this “archive” already created, then you need to go through it and review. Is there stuff you can purge out now? (Don’t toss without asking someone to confirm it’s okay to toss- like financial/business records, for example.)

The things I’m thinking about are old tax returns, we have medical records, documents from when we bought the house, old school records, etc etc. Things like that. You need them, but you don’t NEED them.

Create a safe place for those files somewhere and put them away. NOW.

MY OWN ANSWERS

A-1. I am going to put my extra bulletin boards on the wall in the playroom, and the girls can hang whatever artwork, etc up there. BUT, that is the ONLY PLACE they can put the artwork up, and when it gets full, they will have to clean it out to make room for more. (dealing with their mess and trying to teach them to stay organized, getting kids, involved)

A-2. I want to reorganize my scrapbooking paper. I want to purge all the “pieces.” -I have an entire bin of have used pieces, “because I might need them/ it’s wasteful.” Yeah. Once they go in that bin, I never look at it again. So I want to clean out that bin and save what I can sell at the scrapbooking consignment sale in May, put aside what can be used for titles on pages I’ve already done (NOT saving just in case for future) and GET RID of everything thing else. And no more saving “just in case.” I’ll save it for doing the titles or whatnot, but that’s it. When I’m done with it, it can be tossed from now on. It’s just too much.

Also, I want to go through my massive paper stash, and get it organized, but also purge what I know I will really never use. I’m not living overseas now, I can get scrapbooking stuff as I need to. No need to hoard anymore. So, whatever I can, will go into the scrapbooking consignment sale pile.

My goal with the scrapbooking paper purge, is to get my stash in a usable, organized order, so I can actually see what I have and USE IT UP. (scrapbooking stuff, plus since everything is in my office/classroom area, this will help to clean up/free up some space there.)

B. Thankfully, I’ve been purging this stuff quite well, it’s just building up. So I’m going to go through and pull out things that can go in the file cabinet downstairs, and then ask hubby to take them down and put them away. And also, since it’s a really big file cabinet, I will offer the extra drawer to hubby – maybe he will clean out some of his junk at his desk and put it there? (His desk is in the living room.) (archive files, cleaning out office space to file there, getting hubby involved in the action.)