Paperwork - ugh

One of the dirty little secrets of the quilt shop world is the amount of paperwork that must be dealt with. Paper comes in catalogs, sale sheets, monthly info from sewing machine companies, BILLS, notices of changes, notices of meetings, notices of this, notices of that . . .

I have papers EVERYWHERE - the break room, my office, my home office, in my tote/briefcase, the kitchen counter, everywhere. One of my resolutions for the month of January is to somehow regain control of all this paper and get rid of the piles laying almost everywhere.

Remember when computers came into vogue? How they were going to make us a paperless society? HA! Now I have tons of information in the computer and still have tons of paper everywhere else - who trusts the computer enough to throw all the paper away????

Like you, I watch all those organization shows, I read the articles in the magazines and I try to follow what they say. I stand over the recycling bin while looking at the mail - just how much junk mail does one person really need to get? - and bills go into the Jim pile (oops, that's how piles start!), stuff I need to look at goes in the Debbie file and another pile is for the shredder. Then I'm bored with that and I walk away, leaving the piles to be dealt with later. There's mistake number one.

The problem is, most of this stuff can't be thrown away. It's stuff that needs to be held onto so it can be referred back to, or paid, or a phone call is needed, or something and then your office ends up looking like this.

So last week I took the tiger by the horns (that saying can't be right) and tackled the office at the store. Papers, papers everywhere - some went into the recycling but most were sorted and put into one HUGE pile to be filed - there's that mistake number one again!

Yesterday I did better at the home office. I kicked Jim out of one of the drawers in the file cabinet at home and started sorting. Most of the four piles I had spread around my computer went into file folders & kept.

I still have to tackle piles on the kitchen counter and in the sewing room. Jim's piles? They are definitely JIM'S problem!