From Mountain to Molehill--Update

A little over ten months ago (see "From Mountain to Molehill," August 20, 2006), I started going through boxes of paper and junk that I had piled up, mostly in my bedroom. I've averaged one paper grocery bag of recycled paper a week for ten months--and I'm only halfway there, folks, volume-wise. For ten months I've been sorting out mostly paper, but now I am starting to run into more and more physical stuff that was buried under the paper. Just looking at it, I'm guessing it's about a half-and-half mix of stuff with papers, but I won't know for sure till I actually deal with it.

I have finally begun the filing process! It's only in its first stages and will need further refinement, but it's already making a big difference in how quickly I can find documents I need.

When I first started sorting papers, it was so overwhelming that I could only handle it in three steps: Step 1, sort papers into "Keep" or "Don't Keep." Step 2, sort "Don't Keep" papers into "Shred" or "Recycle." Step 3, sort "Keep" papers into "Important/Information" or "Just Interesting."

Then, in January, I chose five colors--the most common colors of the hanging file folders I prefer--to use as very broad organizing categories. BLUE = ACTIVE (that is, the "Important/Information" papers I kept) and the other colors are going to be for the "Just Interesting" papers: GREEN = MONEY (investing/home business . . . advice, not documentation), YELLOW = RELIGION, ORANGE = PERSONAL (interests, not records), and RED = HOW-TO (including recipes).

Even just getting all the "Keepers" into color categories made it a lot easier to find documents or information I needed, because I could spend 20 or 30 minutes digging through a particular stack instead of hours--or even days--fruitlessly searching an entire house. Now, however, I'll be able to lay my hands on any paper I want in less than 30 seconds! To prove it, I timed myself doing a couple of random searches. Oh, yeah . . . much, much better!

What I've done is set up tentative filing catagories with alpha-numeric codes for BLUE papers, with an index to the codes in the very front folder. For a couple of days now, I've been working my way through a two-foot stack of them, jotting down the filing code in the upper-left corner, putting them in order, and dropping them into file folders. I'm about a third of the way, so within the next two or three days, I should be able to finish filing all of the BLUE papers I've sorted so far.

I'm using cheap and re-used manilla folders for now. I don't want to buy the more expensive colored hanging folders until I know how many I really need. In any case, I won't be filing any of the other colors until every last BLUE scrap is in my filing cabinet--and that won't happen till I've gone through all the remaining boxes and bags of stuff. With fewer papers to sort out and a way to file the BLUE papers, maybe (maybe?) I'll be able to get through all the rest in just a couple of months, instead of ten. I hope so.