Hey Steemians,
I was just recently decluttering my shelves and boxes of books, papers and other folders of junk. As a student, I tend to collect tons to papers thinking that I would need it somewhere or sometime in the near future. When my teachers hand me paper resources, I usually keep all of them just in case I need them. However, I never really referenced to them because they were all sitting in a pile in one of my storage boxes. Another reason why I have a lot of papers is because I am the type of person to keep a hard copy of every essay or piece of writing I have written and I also keep my handwritten drafts just in case something goes wrong digitally. As you can see, I prefer the good old pen to paper over the digital and online systems. As a result, I keep a lot of papers and most of them just take up space.
So, as my school year just finished yesterday, and am currently on break, I have decided to clear out and declutter my stacks of paper. Firstly, I created a big open space on the floor and created 2 piles, to keep and the other is to throw away and recycle. I knew once I removed everything off my shelves, I would have to big mental task ahead of me. I am the kind of person to want to keep everything even though I don’t need it and so, after half an hour of sorting, I found so many pages of written drafts, notes for subjects that are loose out of books, to do lists, booklets of practice papers and many more not keep worthy papers. If you’re like me and the type of person to keep everything, then this will most probably also be your hardest part of decluttering, deciding whether it should be kept or thrown away. Thankfully, I managed to clear out more than half of the papers, keeping only the resourceful papers and notes of topics that will also be tested next year. So now, all I have to do is organise them which I haven't figure out exactly how, but I will sometime.
For those of you who are planning to declutter, make it your goal for the rest of 2017. Start with a big open space and do section by section whether you are just clearing your work space, home office or any room of the house, just remember to be strict with yourself and ask yourself whether you will actually use it within the near future. If not, throw it away.
Is your life mostly on paper or on a digital system? I hope you all do well in your decluttering and organisation for 2018 and have achieved your goals for this year. And, if you have any organisation systems that you think are helpful, please let me know in the comments as that will be much appreciated.