Filing SCORE!

One of the best thrift store finds I've ever had, and I got it for a quarter:

image source

(no, that's not mine, that's the company's pretty photo)

There are so many articles and tips out there on how to organize paper and keep it off the dining table. For a lot of people, their paper piles up as mail. Me, I open the mail just fine and recycle most of it - but the paperwork that I need to file (bills, etc) gets put in a pile on top of the printer which sits on top of a little desktop shelving unit.

my fancy filing tote

The printer that we haven't used in five years.

Ugh.

After thinking long and hard about it, I realized that I will only put paper in folders if the folders are easy to see and access. The dusty tote at the bottom of the closet prior filing system was obviously not working, as evidenced by my complete lack of filing (for three years).

Enter: that desktop organizer. I just knew it would revolutionize my papery life, and for .25 cents it was meant to be.

Of course that desktop organizer has been sitting on the living room floor for about two weeks while I shamelessly avoided the ridiculous mess did more important things, but last night I sucked it up and completely cleared the printer area. The printer and a few other things went into the yard sale box, the shelf got set to the side for another use, and I set up the organizer. The hanging files that we use the most often immediately went in, and I'll add others as needed.

The bottom tray now holds that pile of to-do filing (which I was barely able to shove in there) and the top tray holds some scratch paper, five rolls of tape (no, I don't know why we have so many), and our double deck of playing cards.

This, I can handle.