Satisfaction

I admit it. I love throwing things away. I love cleaning out a binder or a file or even a drawer. Okay, sometimes the actual process can be a bit tedious, but I get such satisfaction from seeing the finished result. And maybe I feel just a teensy bit empowered by deciding what stays and what goes.

So, what did I throw away? Papers, papers and more papers—over a foot high stack of papers. Check out the pic! I couldn’t believe how many papers had accumulated in the several schoolwork archive binders for each child. For starters, I pared down to one binder for each child to archive her schoolwork over the years. When they graduate, it will be fun to look back at a few (emphasis on few) academic samples for each year to see how they’ve matured. That’s enough even for those who are sentimental about little Johnny’s first math paper and little Susie’s first artwork. Each child has a binder and within each binder there are labels for each subject. Within each subject, the papers are ordered from earliest to latest.
Go ahead. Try it. I dare you! Try to throw out some old papers! Start by throwing out just a few, then see if you can work your way up to a big stack like the one above. Granted, I don’t throw away that many papers all the time, but sometimes they accumulate in spite of my best organizational efforts. As a bonus, throwing away unnecessary papers can be downright therapeutic. Leave me a message and let me know how it goes! If you need a little prodding, I’ll be happy to provide that as well.