Do you have mountains of paper clutter around your home? If you do, I feel your frustration! Prior to going through the KonMari Method in the summer of 2016, we had random piles of paperwork throughout our home, with no idea of what it was, and we were never able to find what we needed. It was a nightmare!
Paper Clutter
Tackling the Papers category last year was by far the most challenging, and least enjoyable category of all. It took a long time just finding every piece of paper in the first place. Then of course we had to read through every single one before deciding what to do with it.
Unlike the rest of the categories in the KonMari Method, when it comes to sorting your paperwork, the question is no longer asking yourself if something sparks joy, but rather, is it necessary?
It was hardgoing, but we managed to go through every single piece of paper in the house. Ultimately, we discarded, recycled or shredded about ten large refuse sacks of papers! We went digital wherever possible, and then organised all of the necessary papers into a filing drawer in a desk, and created a box file system. At the end of this behemoth task, all papers were finally organised, and stored together, in one sensible place…
Round 2
For the last few weeks, I have been going through the KonMari Method for a second time, one year after having applied it to every item in our home. Having recently gone through the Clothing and Books categories for a second time, I was hesitant to go through the Papers category again… not because it threatened to be as overwhelming as the first time around, but simply because it is such a dull category.
After considerable procrastination, I eventually pulled out all of our papers and piled them onto the kitchen table, finally prepared to go through everything once again.
And what a difference between last year and this year! Last year, it took days and days just to pull together all of the papers from around the house… every inch of surface and floor space in the guest bedroom was covered in tottering piles of papers when we tackled this category last year. But this year, it took just a couple of minutes to pull out all of our neatly organised paperwork from the study. What a relief!
Method
I went through all of our box files, one by one, emptying them in turn, picking through all of the contents and then putting back only what I felt was necessary to keep. Everything else was placed in a pile to be recycled or shredded at the end.
After the box files, I very quickly looked through all of the slings I had pulled out of the desk filing drawers.
All in all, I managed to discard a fair amount of papers, and it took next to no time at all to do so. Why? Well, because ever since applying the KonMari Method to this category over a year ago, we have been ruthless about discarding paper clutter as soon as it enters our home.
Keeping Paper Clutter At Bay!
Each day, the post comes through the letterbox. And it is placed at one end of our kitchen counter. Any sales leaflets and other advertisements are recycled immediately, whilst everything else has to be dealt with the same day. We file away only what is necessary, and discard the rest. Dealing with paperwork as soon as it enters our home means it never builds up, gets ignored, shifted around or lost. We have finally learned how to keep paper clutter at bay!
Sparking Joy
Watch the video to see for yourself what it was like going through the Papers category for the second time. And if you are still swimming in paper clutter yourself, don’t despair! We were drowning in paper clutter until we discovered the KonMari Method. We put in a lot of hard work last year to regain control of our paper, and it was worth it because it really has been life-changing. Nowadays, we can find anything we need immediately! And that definitely SPARKS JOY!