Project Paper

Organize, organize, organize!!  That's my constant goal for 2011!  It was actually under the ever present "Lose weight" on the list of resolutions....but I seem to be bumping up the priority!  I stumbled across this outrageous, fantastic, gorgeous blog IHeart Organizing...and I have to say that IHeart this blog!  It's run by Jen, who is not only great at organizing her life and home, but she's great at organizing her thoughts well enough to explain to us all how to do it ourselves!

So Jen has been posting a monthly challenge for us all to get our homes a little more...together...if you will!  I am obviously a little late to the show...but decided that I would still start from the beginning and try and catch up.  After I succeeded in the Bowl full of Lemons challenge (seen here and here) , I knew that this is just the kind of thing I needed to get the rest of the house in order!  Thank you blogosphere!!!  How appropriate that just days after I ask Sonny if we really need all the junk in our filing cabinets...I come across her Project Paper challenge for January.  Genius. Inspiring. Sometimes you just need someone else to pint out that your life is a mess and light a fire under your seat to get a move on!

I started by printing out a Consumer Reports guide (Jen's suggestion) on what to keep, when to toss, and all that jazz that you just always assume and never know.  After figuring out which categories applied to our household...I got down and dirrty.  I just dove in and started going through each file one by one.  I didn't take a before pic (as usual....even when I have a good camera I forget) but let me tell you that they were CHOCK FULL.  Here's one drawer when I did remember that "hey, maybe I should photog this"...so you can imagine 4 drawers like this.  Totally wasteful and cluttered and ruining my life with it's oppression!  I never realized how dramatic paper clutter makes me.

So three drawers and an hour and a half later, I walked away with this pile here

And was able to leave this pile here for shredding

Amazing right??  I was blown away at how much junk we were filing and saving and CLEARLY didn't need to.  Do I really need to save that cable bill from 2 years ago? Doubtful.  How about the pamphlets on "How to put your baby to sleep?"  I don't think so.  I didn't tackle that fourth drawer yet as they hold our house info and I want to go over it carefully...not while little people are running around.  And look at my empty drawers!!

Yes...that mass of cords bugs the bleep out of me too...but we can't really tackle that yet.  One thing at a time. 

I have some plans to spray these cabinets a fun color and put them in my new office (hopefully I'm super close to getting a job!  Third interview coming up!!!)...or I may sell them at the garage sale.  In any case...these are empty and waiting to find new use!  And all my sorted down files are going to go into a portable filing cabinet like the one Jen showed on her blog, as I'm going to create a little office nook in our upstairs portion.  This way, when I need something, it's on the main level of my home and not in the boys playroom or in the storage room.  Cuz that don't make no sense at all.

I'm actually excited to tackle that 4th drawer today during naps, and then go shopping for fabulous files that make me happy.  I never thought that a file would make me happy....but they do!  It's a new day, folks.