Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter

Slaying the Paper Tiger

This week, several clients shared their anxiety about their paper clutter. And I get it: those piles can be paralyzing, intimidating or just overwhelming. But once you find your solution, you can slay the paper tiger.

Carol-Anne needed to find some important documents. The problem was that she had stashes of papers all over her apartment. While she managed to find most of the papers what she needed (and purge a lot of other paper in the process) she was still missing one document. In the past, Carol-Anne would have gotten upset, torn through piles, worked herself into a tizzy, but she’s been plugging away at this organizing thing, so she took a deep breath, and looked again through a few piles. She still didn’t find what she was looking for, but she did find more papers she could throw out. She decided to go to bed. In the morning she tried again: Took a deep breath, and began slowly going back through the piles. Lo and behold, she found it. For Carol-Anne the lesson was three-fold: Being calm is always a winning strategy; things would have been easier if she’d had less in the first place; and finally, she needs a filing system—but she can do that! She just needs a good night’s sleep and a deep cleansing breath first.

Melinda had a ton of papers related to a medical issue that she needed to file. She’d bought binders and dividers and sheet protectors, but going through the papers was emotional so she kept postponing it. I suggested she tackle it in five-minute increments. You can handle even the most dreaded tasks for five minutes, and of course, once you take the plunge, you often find it isn’t as bad as you feared, and you can dig in and do 10 or 15 minutes. Still, even if all you can manage is five minutes every day, eventually it will be done. The goal is to start, even just a little bit.

Sometimes, you just don’t know where to start. This was Brenda’s challenge. But if there’s no obvious place to start, just start anywhere. I suggested she begin by just looking through one not-too-big pile of paper. Could she see some easy things to throw out or shred? Maybe you need sort into piles to be made into files. Perhaps you need to buy a shredder.

The thing about paper is, it gets easier. If you’ve been avoiding it, you may be facing a huge challenge, but as you winnow and file, a system will emerge, and that is a beautiful thing. It’s often hard at first, but as you face your fears, you’ll realize that it was only a paper tiger, and you can shred it.