BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Organization Tackling the Paper Pile

On my world -

Our coffee table is already filling up with stuff again. This is Bob's "world" so I'm not sure how to tackle this. Maybe I should just accept that the coffee table will never be clear of junk. He apparently has no interest in doing anything but placing layers and layers of things on it.

My office is becoming full of paper piles again. One issue is these review books that Penguin continuously sends me despite me asking them not to. I will have to make a new "book list" up for the editors and ask them to choose books. That will clear out at least a portion of them.

What else. Two big boxes, I think one is old tax files and the other genealogy files from my father. Time to figure those out and move them to new locations.

What does bob think about your trying to clean up and declutter? Is he fighting your efforts? Is the coffee table in a public living room, or more like a private space like a TV/game room?

My medical binder needs to have more room in it - it's already full. So i grabbed another empty binder today and started working on separating out the physical health info from the mental health info (since I have a mental illness). There is a bit of overlap, but i think this will be the best way to work this out.

I will keep on it and see what can logically be teased from one binder to the other.

The two binders are working out well. There is a lot of room in the mental health binder for me to expand on my DX with research printed off medical websites.

Dear Jilly -

That is great that your binders are working ... One less thing to worry about!

Bob just has a high tolerance for mess. He gets stuff in the mail, he puts out on the table, and it sits there. Then he gets more stuff and it goes on the table on top of the other stuff.

Since the living room is his area he hangs out in I think I have to just accept it.

Lisa, you know that I love getting books from your book pile. However, would it be easier for you to donate them to a women's shelter, the local library book fair, or nursing homes? Then, they would have people to read them, and they wouldn't be cluttering your office.

Dear Connie -

They were sent to us to review so it would feel unethical to me not to try to do that. Plus one of the special treats editors get are these free books so I am happy to send them along. Now that I am finally getting caught up on my backlog I can tackle that next!

Hi Lisa,

It's called a man cave and we're just basically slobs.



-- Burt B.
P.S. I've got the same arrangement -- mail on the dining room table and living room with all kinds of projects hehe

Was my boyfriend the only neat guy around? He went through mail the same day, filed what he needed to in an organized two drawer filing cabinet, and pretty much made sure that there was no clutter lying around.

I wonder what he is doing up there in heaven.....LOL!

Order is the first law of heaven !!