unclutter | More paper (Reply)

I've managed to keep up the habit for the last two weeks of opening and dealing with the post each day. I will keep the paper under control!

Also yesterday I tackled another heap of paper elsewhere in the house. I really wish I'd taken a before picture, so it would be worth taking an after ...

We have floor-to-ceiling IKEA shelving in the living room. I'm really keen to take one of the bookcases down, because it will make room for a sofa. (I've just found my post from last September saying I hoped to get it done before the end of the year ... oh well.)

About 4 shelves of this bookcase were covered in "children's stuff, misc", and one shelf in particular was piled high with random paper, including all the paper planes my son made when going through a making-paper-planes phase a few weeks ago, and loads of his BBC children's activity magazines. This shelf has been annoying me for weeks and yesterday is when I got around to it.

I started by giving my son a couple of the most recent magazines on top of one of the piles. He then happily worked through sticker pages and dot-the-dot and writing practice, and said "look at this Mum" lots, while I got on and tidied things and made encouraging mummy-noises as required.

I started with the least-cluttered shelf and did the decluttering dance:

One thing at a time
Where does it go? Bin, recycling, belongs somewhere else

I managed to make enough space to start grouping the "misc stuff" together:

stickers
paper
stencils
pens
crayons
magazines
old cards for cutting up/collaging/drawing on

I was ruthless: torn or badly crumpled sheets of paper or stickers went in the recycling, as did half-completed activity magazines. Broken crayons and pencils in the bin, along with random plastic "arty" tat that has never been used.

I found a fair few magazines for grownups in the general mess, plus enormous numbers of the local shop's special offers flyer. This encouraged me to tackle another nearby shelf which was overflowing with magazines that husband and I keep intending to read. I was ruthless with these too:

for 'my' magazines, only the latest issue of each was kept unless I was really sure I wanted to read it
for 'his' magazines (much less by volume) I checked with him and recycled some, and put all but the most recent issue of the rest into a bag for him to take to his work common room

End result:

one low shelf (where child can reach) on a different bookcase now has:
- all the completely untouched activity magazines (lots)
- two pots, of crayons and pencils respectively
- other art materials sorted into two clear stackable boxes topped by a couple of pads of paper
The shelf above has:
- one pile of my magazines to read
- one pile of my husband's magazines
- one pile of "current" magazines we both read, plus the current special offer flyer
four shelves have been removed from the bookcase I'm trying to empty (to discourage refilling)
a vast pile of paper/magazines/card has gone into the recycling bin
a small pile of plastic has gone into the general waste bin
the bookcase is tantalisingly close to empty now, but I need to work out where the remaining stuff can go
my previously half-empty desk is now full of stuff to sort out that didn't belong in the living room :-(