Bigger Buckets: Streamline Paper Processing by Rethinking Your Categories
Wherever the Clutter Fairy goes, she meets people who struggle with paper. For many of us, the rate of accumulation outstrips the time, energy, and enthusiasm we can muster for paper processing. The inbox overflows, and the dream of an orderly filing system gives way to stacks, heaps, bags, and boxes of paper chaos.
At the April 2016 meeting of the Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup Group, Gayle Goddard dug deeper into the core source of paper backlog: an impulse to collect that’s out of sync with our will and ability to process. She explored ways to rethink and retool paper storage by defining “bigger buckets.”
When I was a young woman, my boyfriend had one drawer that was his “file” drawer. If he needed to keep it, he’d throw it in the drawer. On New Years Day, he’d tear off the calendar page and throw it in the drawer, as a marker. I protested that it couldn’t possibly work that way. He said that it was a “chronological filing system” and that if he needed something, it would be in there. He could always find something within 5 minutes. I had an intricate filing system, and I could never find any damn thing. grrrrrrr.