When computers and the internet came, it was predicted that paper would now decrease, but on the contrary, the consumption of paper has increased and paper comes into our homes in all possible forms. Some are easier to handle than others, such as the flyers that arrive, while others are more difficult, such as the children's school papers. Regardless of which paper you think is the most difficult, paper has the ability to enter our homes and place itself everywhere in the home. So the question is how to deal with your papers.
To answer the above statement, how should you deal with your papers, we need to start by collecting all the papers you have and dividing them into categories. The categories can be the following: Advertising Newspapers School paper Bills Subscriptions and other contractual documents Papers about your house or apartment purchase or similar Declarations and tax papers Bank paper Drawings from the children Instruction manuals that come with the purchase of a product Receipts Salary specifications Other important papers that you provide in your home
Note that I'm not counting regular books here, it's a category of its own even though it's made up of paper.
To sort and decide When you sort through the papers, you will surely come across papers that you immediately want to throw away, so have a bag at hand (I prefer a paper bag) where you can immediately drop only the papers to be thrown away. Please note that some papers contain sensitive information and need to be destroyed first. I usually put these in my own pile and when I'm completely done for the day I cut them into strips, it's just as well to use a shredder if you have one, but scissors work just as well if you don't. If you have a lot of paper to shred, I prefer a shredder as it takes a lot of work to cut paper into strips.
Advertising and newspapers without a direct connection to you or your relatives should be able to be relegated to the paper bag directly. No, you don't need to check them out and see if there's a good deal, just throw them away. The goal is to declutter not find more things to bring into the house. If it is possible to stop the influx of these into your home, please do so. Here in Sweden, we can put up a sign on the mailbox or the door and then no advertising may be placed in our mailbox.
School papers and children's papers can be tricky for many. I usually think this when I go through my son's drawings, I save the best. Often children draw the same thing over and over again, I either save the first one he drew or the one that was the best. I don't need to save 10 drawings with pictures of the same thing. Another tip is to have a binder or similar and what fits in there can be saved, that is your limit. I can guarantee you that the children rarely want to save their own drawings when they are adults as there is rarely any interest for them to keep them in their own homes afterwards. You can also imagine that you save, for example, 10 drawings from the same year and that is your limit. When it comes to school papers, I usually do the following. I always ask my son which ones he wants to save, he always says all of them. Then I say but then you can put them in your box. He can't take it, so then I go through them and save the best, which could for example be a fairy tale he wrote himself or a test he did extra well on. Think the same here, your child probably won't want all his school papers when he moves out and creates his own life, and why would he want that. I don't think anyone sits and shows their results to their children when their own children are old enough to understand.
Many years ago I read the following regarding our salary specifications. Why do we save these for, is the idea that later in life we will sit and show our children how little we earned compared to them or should we ourselves sit and compare our salary figures to see our own salary development. Maybe something to do as a pensioner for lack of other things to do, right? After I read that, I threw away all my paychecks.
As for what I call "important papers", different countries have different time limits for how many years you need to save these. I advise you to do the following regarding these, which refers to bills, declarations, contract papers and so on, to first find out how many years you need to save these. Then you get some kind of system where you put the papers in order chronologically with the year at the front and let's say the 7th year at the back. Every year when you insert a new piece of paper that you need to save, you throw away the last piece of paper where the time limit for the piece of paper has expired. In this way, if you keep the system rolling and say the law says 7 years, there is no reason to save paper for 15 years back in time.
Receipts and instruction manuals I do as follows, if it is an expensive product where I intend to go back to the store I bought the product in if there is something wrong with the product, I save the receipt. If I'm unsure about a size, I save the receipt until I've tested the product properly at home. If my intention is not to go back if, for example, the item is bad, I don't save the receipt. The receipt is a guarantee certificate, if you have never intended to use the guarantee, there is no reason to save the receipt. When it comes to gifts, I keep the receipt until I have given the gift and see that the person is satisfied and does not want to exchange it for something else, then I throw the receipt away unless it was an expensive household appliance, because then I keep the receipt as warranty proof in case the product breaks. Almost all manuals are available online so save only the ones you think you will absolutely need. Apart from saving them for the household appliances that belong to the apartment I live in, I have only saved it for the washing machine I bought a year ago because I may need to read it later if something goes wrong.
It may seem overwhelming at first to sort and review all the papers you own if you've never done it before, but once the big declutter is done, you'll feel a lot easier. If you then determine one month per year when you go through all the papers and throw out-of-date papers, you will notice that it goes faster and faster every year. If you then add that you continuously throw away papers that come into the home that are unnecessary for you, you will notice a big difference. From now on, it can only get better if you want to put some time and commitment into this now. Still in doubt, consider the following: the more paper you have at home, the greater the fire risk. Paper burns quickly if you have a fire in your home. Grab the piles of paper now, your time for a more paperless life starts today.
