8/8/15Everyday I feel like I get about 2 million pieces of paper, many of which I don’t know what to do with, and they end up just cluttering my space. Now 2 million could be an exaggeration, but that’s the way it can feel, especially during the school year. I have been told by many teachers to save papers I have written or things like that because they end up being useful in college. My sisters also would keep their notebooks incase they needed it in a later class or to help out others. Over time saving all of this paper takes up a lot of space, and really who needs to have 5 packets on how to write a good essay. Now as I am ever so slowly moving towards a minimalistic lifestyle I am wanting to get rid of the unnecessary (something that is plentiful in my life), I decided I would start going through all these old papers I have been saving. Especially because now I am done with high school, and many of these subjects I will not need in college Since the start of the school year is quickly approaching I thought it would be a good time to post this, and to help out some of you who may be drowning in old papers as we speak.
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This all started out by just collecting everything that needed to be cleaned out. I took the folders from this most recent year, as well as a few other folders and binders from years past that were in my room, and started filling a plastic bin. However like previously mentioned I have been saving my notebooks and school papers for years and have been storing it in a large bin in the basement. My goal was to fit all my school papers into that one bin. Now even though I knew most of these papers were probably quite useless and I didn’t need to keep any pages from my 7th grade social studies class, I went through every page in every folder, and binder. Now this sounds like way more work than it actually was since I knew at a glance what 90% of the pages were and I could decide in a matter of seconds whether I needed to keep it or not. I got rid of anything I didn’t think I would study anymore, or info I knew I wouldn’t forget (aka pythagorean theorem and/or how to outline a sentence).I also got rid of info I could easily find somewhere online if I did need it, like how to find the areas of different 3D shapes. I got rid of a lot of things because I knew that it would not help me in the future. Most of the pages that I kept were about concepts I knew would be used again in the future, or that I found the way the information was taught to be very useful. When it came to my Chemistry and my Anatomy binders I didn’t even touch them. I knew that they would be very helpful on the off chance I needed them (Because I am taking chemistry this year so I am very glad I kept it). It helps me to review the material from the original way I learned it rather than learn it from a new way that I may find harder to understand. I may just be weird like that, but it is especially true for math.
Once I cleaned out a folder I also examined it to see if it was worth keeping and reusing or if it was better just to be recycled. Many folders and binders went to the trash, but there were quite a few in good condition that I kept. I always find folders useful since new papers are always showing up and I need a way to organize them.
I worked through this whole process while watching Youtube and listening to books on tape which made the whole process go quite smoothly. Soon all of the papers were sorted and I had a huge pile to go to recycling. Everything fit back nicely into the big bin and was stored back in the basement. Now in this situation I went through school papers, but feel free to do this with any paper you have in you life: work, volunteering, doodling, scrapbooking, or any others. Just evaluate whether you would need/want/use it in the future, and if you don’t I would say throw it away. Store any paper you do not need on hand since paper adds up quickly. There are many ways you can end up storing paper. You obviously can just use a folder for each subject, or each year, whatever works best for your mind, but if you want to store by year I would go with a binder and use page dividers. Of course for me binders can get annoying since if the pages are not 3 hole punched you have to do it yourself, which can be a lot of work in my opinion. If this is the case I would then suggest an accordion file folder, because you can store pages of any size and you don’t have to worry about hole being punched in them. Also they have built in dividers so I find them the easiest to organize. That is just my personal favorite, but I still wanted to include the other options incase you think they are handy. Now you may just find it easier to get a filing cabinet for these papers, but I am all about using what you already have and I think more people have plastic bins rather than file folders, but it all depends. You could also scan each page you want to keep and store them on your computer, which I would probably say is the ideal method, but for me it is more time consuming, and like you probably already know I am lazy, so I just want the easiest method. Well I hoped these tips helped you in some way and I hope to do more organizational posts in the future since they are some of my favorites.