Organizing Paper Management

Happy Friday! This week we're going to be talking about the 4th category of organization in the home that is not optional, and that is paper organizing. Last year we did the study on the weight of paper in the American home, and we identified this is a huge issue for Americans, from the mental piles which become the kitchen counter paper piles which become unfinished projects and notes and actionable to-dos Your important papers and your filing cabinet, all of these are problem areas in American homes. So in the study that we just did, we've divided out these 4 categories of organizing: personal organizing, we talked about a few weeks ago, followed by family communal organizing, and then storage organizing, and now we're getting to paper organizing. And I've got, I've got to give Americans a shout out. You do feel the most organized about paper. Of all these categories, if you had to say which area are you most organized in? Paper. People are raising their hand and saying paper, paper. Are you kidding me? Paper. But it's not a passing grade, you guys. We aren't even really on the chart. 18%, 18% of Americans say that they have a paper management system that is working. That is less than 1 in 5. And that is the highest grade we're getting in all of these categories. So when Americans are taking this survey, they're saying, 87%. 87% are saying yes, we believe organization is learnable skill. Are you personally organized? No. Are you family communal space organized? No. Are you storage space organized? No. Are you paper organized? More than any of the other categories, but also no, no, no. We believe it's learnable, but we aren't achieving it, which means that what? We internalize there's something wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you. Organization is a learnable skill. It's just where do you go to learn it? Who's teaching it? How do you absorb it? So let's dive into what is, what is paper organization anyway? Why aren't we paperless? Aren't we supposed to be paperless? I was told we weren't even going to have paper. Why is this around? And if, if it's around, How do we digitize it? How do we organize it? Well, there are these 5 areas of paper organization that I have identified. The first and the most confounding and the most anxiety and depression-inducing and overwhelmed feeling are the mental paper piles. And you're like, there are not pieces of paper in my brain, Lisa. I checked neurons, cells. They're not little pieces of paper up here. True, they're not any physical pieces of paper up here in your brain, but if you take what's in your brain and you literally write it down on note cards, Post-it notes, to-do lists, whatever, and it moves out of your brain from a thought into something that is written on a piece of paper, the relief is immediate. You, you immediately feel like lighter and that your brain has more capacity to think. So the first part of paper is the fact that we store so much mentally. We use our brains like to-do lists. I don't know why we do this. I think it's because we're afraid if we write it down, we're going to forget where we put it, which is likely true. But also, if we write it down, then we actually have to do it because we could see it. I don't know, we just keep it in our brain. So step 1 is to actually get it out of your brain and onto paper, which then leads to the second problem, which is going to be, great, Lisa, you're just adding to my kitchen counter piles, my work piles, my Laundry room piles, my nightstand piles. My I have piles of paper everywhere. The last thing that I need are more piles. So if I take it out of my brain and I put it, I'm just getting more and more piles. This does not help me at all. Then then the third category of this mental paper problem that we have in our homes is the unfinished projects, projects that are in process, things that are actionable that we forgot about or ran out of money for or ran out of time and like. They're in limbo somewhere. They're started, but they're not finished. I've purchased all the mason jars. I have not moved my household paint into mason jars and created a new log of what all the different colors are of the paint in my house. That is a project that is in process. The mason jars are sitting in my garage, the paint is still sitting in my basement, and in my Sunday basket is a little note that says finish this project. We have projects like this In various states of being done all over our house, and when we think about paper, we think about these two. We think about our important papers. Where's my birth certificate? Has our my passport expired? Where is you know the deed to our house? And things that we put in our filing cabinet. My filing cabinet is overflowing. I don't even know what's in there. I have this whole stack of things that need to be filed. There's no more room in the filing cabinet. I don't even remember what I labeled things. I don't know how to label them, so I'll just stack them on top. These are the papers we think about when we want to organize paper in our house. The first 3 that I told you about, the active actionable mental piles, kitchen counter piles, to-do list piles, these are the ones that give us all of the stress. So we try to solve this problem by making a really cool color-coded filing cabinet. Which looks awesome and is a great project to do, but it is totally non-maintainable. It doesn't help you at all in an emergency situation. When do you need your birth certificate? When you're applying for something somewhere that is not at your home. When do you need your financial papers? When you are getting a loan at a bank or settling an estate with a lawyer or you You don't need these papers at your house. You almost never need these papers at your house. You need these important papers when you are doing something important that's costing you a lot of time and money. Getting a loan, getting married, settling an estate, advocating for your kids' special needs, whatever. You need these papers out and away from your house. They need to be portable. A filing cabinet is not portable. You live in Florida and you need to evacuate for a hurricane. How are you gonna evacuate your filing cabinet? You live in California And a fire breaks out. How are you going to evacuate filing cabinet? You're not. You're you're not. These important papers need to be in just a few select binders. Binders are portable. You can take one at a time to different places where you need to advocate, and you can take them all if you need to evacuate. But this project, once done, just needs to be maintained. This is where we think the problem is. This is where the mental anxiety problem is. Your mental piles, your kitchen counter piles, and your projects that are halfway done, partially started, purchased but not done anything with at home. Sunday basket solves this, binder solves this. This is how you organize your paper. Now I'm just gonna be honest with you, this is not a one-day or even a one-weekend event. This will take, you know, if you've been living in your house for 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, To get all of your paper organized, it's going to take about 90 days. It could take six months, especially if you're organizing your parents' paperwork and you know it's been 50 years of not being organized. Every single piece of paper needs to be looked at, and that's why it's going to take time. And that is why we have certified organizers that will help you do the Sunday basket, help you do the binders, and we do them in retreats. It's fun. Like we feed you, we answer your questions. You could do them virtually. You could do them in person. You can find out more about the retreats on the Organized 365 website and the products and. of our store. What else is going on right now at Organized 365? Oh my goodness, drum roll please! We finally, finally, finally have launched our Education Work Box this week. We're still in pre-sale, which means if there are still some available, which I'm not sure if there are or not, you could get a pre-sale purchase of the Sunday Basket Work Box, which is going to include our Tropical Sunday Basket as a bonus. When that is sold out, it's sold out, and then next Friday we will have our official full launch and start shipping those pre-sales and the new orders that are coming in. We are running to the end of registration for Embrace, so if you want to join us virtually for the Embrace conference in Cincinnati, it is sold out. The in-person portion is sold out. We would love to have you join us virtually. This is where you really deep dive with me and explore what are you uniquely gifted and created to do, and in this 2-day-long event I will be guiding you Talks and experiences will help you listen to yourself about what it is that you are uniquely created to do. And we've got a couple of things coming up for those of you that are in the education field and those of you that are in businesses. If you are in a business and you have a Friday workbox like I do, our next workbox planning day is going to be on June 3rd. So you want to register, you want to get a planner if you don't have one, and join me. There is no replay, so you need to join it. You can watch a replay. But you can't buy it after the fact and just watch the replay. You need to register for the live. That is going to be on June 3rd. And this Tuesday coming up, listen to the podcast coming up on Tuesday. I'll be revealing all of the details for teacher camp. We're going to have teacher camp the week of July 11th to the 15th, where for those of you in the education industry, get your work box, come to teacher camp. By the end of teacher camp, it'll be all set up, ready to go. You can enjoy the rest of your summer. Until your next school year. Have a great week, you guys.