Paper clutter… the bane of every homemaker’s existence. We receive more every day in the mail, kids’ backpacks, art projects made at home, etc. Paring down to the necessities feels almost impossible due to the sheer bulk of paper we receive and store in our homes.
Even in college, I kept a filing box in my dorm room with the basics. Financial aid and tax forms, personal/sentimental papers, essays, medical records. I remember some surprised comments from friends when they noticed, but it helped me graduate without stuffed boxes of essays and random receipts to lug home!
Since having kids, our paper clutter multiplies much faster. I did a massive clean-out before our move a couple of years ago, but it’s truly something you need to work away at every week. At the moment we have a filing cabinet with ~30 files (which isn’t full) and each child has a box for schoolwork. I’m content with that volume of paper for now.
How to Get Rid of Paper Clutter
- Have an inbox (that’s limited in size). We have a 4-slot mail organizer in our kitchen. One file is the “inbox” (things that haven’t been handled yet), one is “to file/shred,” one is the “outbox,” and one is for random small non-paper items that need dealing with. Mostly random hardware and broken toys, haha. This system works because the slots are quite thin, so we’re forced to deal with it at least twice monthly.
- Toss out the “easy stuff” right away. Magazines, flyers and postcards from companies you don’t purchase from –> straight to the recycling!
- Mark bills as paid so you can file them worry-free. Write “paid” and the date you paid the bill as a record.
- Unsubscribe. It’s a pain to call up random companies, but can be worth it. I do it for the ones that send mail most frequently.
- Go virtual when possible. If you’re comfortable receiving bills, tax documents and other communications online, this helps reduce your incoming volume of paper.
- Maintain a streamlined filing system. We include medical bills and records, OT/speech therapy records for kids, auto and home purchase/sale/improvement documents, investment and bank statements, appliance manuals, and tax documents. Don’t use your file box as an excuse to save everything.
- Buy a shredder. So much easier to deal with old records/receipts this way than with scissors or waiting for a community shredding event. You want that paper out ASAP!
- Go through bills, bank statements and receipts annually. You don’t need to keep most for longer than a few years. Plus if you’ve switched to virtual statements, it’s satisfying to watch those files shrink year after year.
- Limit kids’ creations to a set space. I always let my kids choose what to keep, but at the moment they each have one old file box for their art. So when the box fills up, they need to recycle something in order to add something else.
- Be ruthless with old papers and paper products. Yearbooks, photos, journals, school projects. I found that I wanted to save my photo albums and teenage journals, but I didn’t care about old yearbooks or schoolwork. Three years on, I still don’t miss them!
- Keep a sentimental papers journal. I don’t like tossing out wedding invitations from close friends or graduation announcements from my cousins, so I keep that kind of thing taped into a journal. It’s fun to flip through. I have a copy of our wedding invite in there too 🙂
- Paper clutter is an ongoing project. Learn to coexist with it always feeling half-done. That’s tough for me as an all-or-nothing person, but it’s the nature of homemaking.
How do you get rid of paper clutter in your home?
xx Claire
P.S. Interested in more decluttering tips? Here you can read about my minimizing efforts through the years, and ways to declutter specific areas like your bookshelf or kitchen.
