I recently worked with a client that had 7-8 boxes of paperwork sort of scattered throughout her home. Dealing with the paperwork seemed daunting and overwhelming and so she just put it off. In reality though, she was dealing with it every day by not dealing with it. She felt stressed, depressed, overwhelmed and out of control all of the time.
As I’ve always said, clutter represents delayed decisions. The impact of putting the decisions off is much worse than taking the time to make the decisions. When we worked together, the client was forced to make the decisions about her paperwork that she’d been putting off. She, like so many other clients I’ve helped with their paperwork, excitedly said “this is so easy!”.
Normally making one decision impacts more than one item. So if you just make a couple of decisions each day, you should be able to impact the clutter in your home greatly in no time. Those decisions might be:
- Do I need to save bill copies if I pay my bills online?
- Do I need to save loan information from a car that I’ve already sold?
- Do I need to save every paper that my child brings home, or just 10 favorites a year?
- Do I want to take the time to stop junk-mail?