By Lisa We all have that one side table or counter where all mail, books, and coupons get dumped. When you find yourself playing countertop Jenga when looking for something specific, the time has come to get rid of that mess. It just seems like such a mess you don’t know where to start. Here’s how to get ‘er dun quickly and relatively painlessly:
Do it right now. Don’t wait until you go to the bathroom, take a shower or send a text. This will take you all of five minutes, tops. In fact, your goal should be to do it as quickly as possible so you don’t second guess your decisions.
Grab your pile of stuff, and put it on a bigger table that you use often like your dining room table. You will need a larger surface and having it be one you use will force you to get this completed now.
Designate four spots on your table: Keep, Move, Trash and Shred.
As quick as you can, take a small stack and start sorting your papers.
‘Keep’ means things you will need short-term like bills, coupons, or anything that needs action within the next month.
‘Move’ means stuff you need to refile, like work papers that need to go into your car or home office, legal or financial papers you want to save or books that need to be put somewhere else.
‘Trash’ means all those advertisements for junk you don’t need anyway, magazines you will never read, scrap paper or anything else you are keeping around because you are going to ‘get to it someday’.
‘Shred’ means any papers you don’t want other people to see, like old bills, legal papers, etc.
Keep sorting until you are done. Get a bowl, small box or small standing file and put your ‘Keep’ items in it. Grab your ‘Move’ pile and put it into a bag or box for carrying. Quickly head to your car, home office, library or unsuspecting family member’s room and unload until empty. Get a trash bag and put the ‘Trash’ in it and put it in the garbage–do it now and don’t rethink! Take all ‘Shred’ items and put into a trash bag to either shred at home, the office or keep until your city offers a shred day.
Take your (small) ‘Keep’ stuff and put it wherever you will see it daily. Put a task into your phone with a reminder alarm of when you need to get bill payments out, etc. Make it recurring!
And, when you see the inevitable pile happen again, just repeat. Your goal is to do it now, sort quickly and get that area down to the short-term tasks.
Maybe just maybe you will have room for a legit mini Jenga game. Stress reliever!