Conscious Choice Seattle: Peace of Paper

March 2006 | Whole Health

Peace of Paper

Find more energy and enthusiasm for life under those piles and stacks

By Karen Roehl

What is the biggest energy drain in your life? Mine used to be paper. Here’s how to make peace with paper.
Paper comes into our lives from many directions. The mail comes every day. We bring home handouts from workshops and bulging briefcases from work. Our children have artwork and papers, homework and projects. Plus, there are our own projects and the instructions and supporting materials that go with them. Magazines and newspapers stack up—we just know we’re going to read them! And even when we finally toss the magazines or newspapers, clippings and recipes stay in our clutches.

You can just feel the energy draining away.

Keeping paper under control helps to pay the bills on time, return signed papers promptly and saves hours and headaches at tax time. But there are even greater, healthier benefits to getting control of our paper. It directly increases our energy and enthusiasm for life.

That’s about as health-conscious as you can get, whether you eat your vegetables or not.

When health is hiding

Let’s do a quick check of your paper habits and how they may be affecting your health.

When people come to your home or office, do you collect your piles of paper into bags or boxes, hide them away, and say you’ll go through them later? Or maybe stick them haphazardly into a cabinet to be sorted later…but later never comes?

Chances are that collected paper is everything from important papers that truly need your immediate attention to junk mail and magazines that you won’t read, despite your positive intentions. Wouldn’t it be nice if a friend could drop by or a co-worker could come into your office without you needing to apologize for the clutter on the kitchen table or the chaos on your desk?

Just feels healthy, doesn’t it?

When is the last time you ate a meal at your kitchen table without having to move stuff out of the way? When did you last see the top of your desk?

And how about the issue of finding what you need when you need it. The fear that I hear voiced by many people (including clients) is that if anything were to happen to them, the person needing to handle their affairs would not be able to find the vital paperwork. Can you put your hands on your birth certificate, your mortgage papers, or your car repair receipts?

Until I began my organizing process, my bills were constantly paid late because I could not find them. I had no working file system in place, and I saved years of all sorts of paperwork because I did not have a clear idea about how long things should be kept, so I just kept it all.

System of sanity

By now you may be thinking—well yeah, that sounds like me. But I’m so overwhelmed I don’t know where to begin. My advice is this—start with today. When paperwork is stacked up, files need purging and mail isn’t opened and processed consistently, something needs to change to break the cycle. Since chaos breeds chaos, if you think you have to get caught up before you can work on current papers, then the piles just keep growing and become more unmanageable. There is no plan for getting caught up.

So, starting today, create one place where mail goes. Open it daily, and sort your action items into files.

Most of us keep papers visible and in piles because we hope we’ll remember to deal with them if we see them—but does that really happen? Within the action file, create files for different specific actions. Think of them in terms of verbs such as PAY, SEND and DISCUSS.

As new papers arrive, place them in one of the three files. This will eliminate the steady growth of new piles and you can address the new paper without adding to the bags and boxes, piles and pressures already present.

This is important: It takes less time and energy to do similar actions at the same time than to sporadically sort.

The inevitable backlog

When today’s bills are paid on time, you will have more energy to address your inevitable backlog. This step will pay huge dividends in both, more energy and less brain noise.

Control of paper will resonate positively in all parts of your life. It is not an exaggeration to say that your health will improve noticeably in the process.

Here are some recommendations for dealing with your backlog of paper, one of the ultimate energy drains in modern life:

Gather all paper into one sorting place. If you have papers in various parts of your home or office, collect it all into one place. Not only will this make setting up a process for sorting through these papers easier, but you will immediately get a feeling of more spaciousness and order in the rest of your home.

Create a safe, supportive environment. Light a candle, put on music, do focused breathing, pray, look at a picture, write in your journal, read a poem, or do whatever will help you get focused and grounded. Making peace with your paper is not punishment. It is self-care.

Get a helper. It is tremendously useful to have someone help keep you on task. Find a person who can witness your process and is willing to act as your assistant. Concentrate on making decisions while your helper organizes—the process will feel less overwhelming.

Decrease the volume. When there is a lot of backlog, the initial sort should be a YES-NO sort. Place the NO pile into recycling or shredding (if there is personal information such as a social security number or account numbers). Place the YES pile in a box.

Ask yourself these questions to help decrease the volume: Does this belong in my life or not? Is this obsolete? Is it too late to use this? Why have I chosen to keep this? Can I easily replace this?

Set a time limit. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by what seems like never-ending paper clutter. Set aside 15 or 30-minute time slots for paper sorting and organization.

Create “Action” and “Reference” files. Divide the YES papers into “Things You Need to Take Action On” and “Things You Need to Keep for Reference.” If you have file cabinets and they are in need of purging, create your reference file system in a temporary banker’s box with hanging files so that you will at least have the beginnings of a system that fits your current life.

Begin making files named the way you think of them and place them in the box. Don’t worry about what type of categories you will need. That will make more sense later after you have more files created and you see themes emerging.

One of the things I see that stops people from creating a system is thinking they need to have all of the answers up front to even begin. Not so! Remembering that single concept will change your relationship to paper for the better.

For example, one client had paper everywhere in bags, boxes, and piles. Her biggest fear was that if something happened to her, nobody would know where to find her important papers.

With her new filing system in place she attacked piles, bags and boxes with vigor. She said every “completion” fed her energy like a wonderful meal or a good workout. She discovered that it is easy to maintain a system that is styled specifically for how she works.

This client now has her papers completely managed and her files include a Living Will file that is easy to find. Her new sweetheart knows where to find these things and so does her family.

Yes, she cleared the clutter out of her life and made room for the arrival of love. We insulate ourselves, even from the things we’re sure we want, when we let paper keep us from inner and outer order and harmony.

Clear your clutter and make space for miracles.

Karen Roehl is the owner of Clear Living, Inc. based in Kirkland. Her business provides clutter, personal organizing and AD/HD coaching. She has recently launched a full Clear Living workshop series including TimeStyling, Mastering Paper, Clearing the Clutter in Relationships and Clear Living with AD/HD. There is a Managing Work Well workshop March 9 and a Mastering Paperwork workshop March 11. For more information, call 425-814-9621, Email or visit www.clearliving.biz.

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