De-Clutter Challenge Updates - Digitalising your Paper Records

Last week I talked about the 52 Week De-Clutter Challenge from the Organised Housewife and to keep me on track I am sharing my progress on the blog.

Task 1 - Noticeboard, cork board, inspiration board or the fridge. This was a quick and simple challenge as I did the fridge, it’s amazing how many expired vouchers, old school notices and more ends up gathering on the fridge if not checked regularly. Now my fridge has only a calendar and a couple of current school reminders. What a difference it makes.

Although I am also creating a little inspiration board to hang on the wall to remind me how I want my home to look. I created this digital version this week, but am going to print it and set it on a canvas to hang on the wall over the weekend so it's there all the time to keep me on track.

 

 

The images represent the feeling I want, a home that is clean, clutter free but still lived in. I don't want clinical, but want a home I can walk into, feel proud of the way it looks, but know that it's a home, not a showcase where people are afraid to get comfy.

Task 2 -  Kid’s Artwork, Drawings & Creations. this would have to be the best idea for de-cluttering. My daughter is a prolific creator and our house abounds with drawings, paintings, sketches and handmade creations that have no purpose and we have drawers spilling with her work.

I am still working on this one but I suspect it will be an ongoing task as every time I open a drawer somewhere in the house I find more drawings, colourings, sketches and art that have been forgotten. But now I have a digital frame in the lounge which rotates through all the images created from the scans and it’s quite lovely to see her creativity on show and not jammed in a drawer somewhere forgotten and she can see how her style and creativity has progressed from infancy to now.

In fact I was so impressed by the amount of space we managed to retrieve by clearing out all that clutter that I am expanding the brief and using this same concept in my office and studio. I have shelves full of paperwork, class work and instruction sheets from the vocational course, financial paperwork for the family and the business, plans, documents, paper, paper, paper!!!!

So my goal over the next month is to gather together all the documents and papers in my office, scan them, sort them into labelled archive folders on a hard drive. It’s amazing how much space you reveal and how much more organised your space is when not cluttered by reams of paper. After all, in this age of technology, keeping electronic records makes far more sense. 

I am pretty excited about the changes I have been making, in addition to the challenge I started following the example of another blogger who is recording ‘365 things I can live without’ so I have been slowly and ruthlessly throwing away items, at least one every day. It’s quite a cathartic feeling to be removing unused and unwanted clutter from your home.

It always seems a little wrong to give away or throw away items that are perfectly good, just unused, or even worse, items that were a gift from someone. But unfortunately it is that struggle that allowed my home to become so cluttered and disorganised.

Do you have any stories you can share following the De-Clutter challenge or other similar projects, or de-cluttering ideas, share them in comments to help on my road to a cleaner, brighter home.

 

Images by of Michal Marcol and Gualberto107 on freedigitalphotos.net