February 2008 - The Parklander Magazine

Watch Out ForThat Paper Avalanche!By Susanne PhelpsFaced with several projects in need of immediate attention, i.e., your articleis overdue; your gallery needs five more paintings; and your biggest clientwants an entirely new advertising plan next week—you need to get focusedfast! But try as you might, you cannot concentrate on your work. You fidget,daydream and come up with one false start after another.Could it be that the stacks of junk on the floor and piles of papercovering your desk are distracting you? Each piece of paper seems to benagging at you. READ ME! FILE ME! FIX MY PROBLEM!ANSWER THIS CALL!No wonder concentrating on the project at hand is difficult.Perhaps these tips from Clearing the Clutter for Good Feng Shui by MaryLambert may help explain just why clutter is counterproductive:“The room you work in should nurture you and your abilities. If your desk iscluttered with numerous items and the floor is covered with boxes, reports,and files, chi will get stuck and your creativity and decision-making skills willbe blocked, causing you to work in a confused, disorganized way. Even filecabinets stuffed with redundant projects or information about bad clients willcreate negative space in the work area.” And do not forget electronic storage.“Leaving old material on your machine will hold you back from progressingwith new projects.”Perhaps chi and Feng Shui isn’t your bag. But nevertheless, junk and excesspapers do block creativity. Some part of your brain and psyche are alwaysworrying about all the things you have not completed, represented by pilesand mounds of stuff and just plain paper clutter.Paper, for better or worse, is here to stay. It is portable, easy to read, easy toedit, quick to page through. Unfortunately, paper clutter is denser than otherkinds of clutter. There are more pieces per pile. A large pile of paper cancontain hundreds of items, each one requiring you to take action now!When you are ready to deal with your paper mess,try these easy methods:• Remove all the big stuff: notebooks, magazines, books, newsletters;• Put financial papers, bills, bank statements, receipts, and invoicesto send, in a special place. You should deal with these items promptlyand consistently;• Quickly glance at the remaining paper, tossing anything outdated orof marginal interest.• Create places for items requiring action; i.e. file, respond, to read;• Make decisions quickly. DO NOT stop and read aging news clippingsor old advertisements and catalogs;• To prevent piles from building up, open and deal with incoming mailevery day. Cancel subscriptions, which you don’t truly need or enjoy,and toss ads and junk mail immediately upon receipt. Do NOT printevery joke, email or interesting web site you see; pretend that eachminute and each sheet of paper is very costly.HAPPY DECLUTTERING!54 FEBRUARY 2008Susanne Phelps is a South Florida resident, a professional organizer andPresident of Clutter Tamer, Inc.