With the school year starting up, I decided to finally get serious about organizing my room and preparing for my course work. I’m also in the process of implementing a “Getting Things Done” system. I won’t go into that here, but you can read more at the GTD Wikipedia page.
The biggest challenge in this process is deciding what to throw out.
I’m probably a bit of a hoarder (though nothing like what you see on the A&E show). I can get rid of Stuff if I feel I really need to, but usually I just stack papers on a shelf and pretend I’m organized. No more!
Over the past few days, I’ve made myself get rid of piles of Stuff. To help make decisions, I asked myself a few questions about each item:
- Do I really need this?
- Would I notice if this item was stolen?
- Is there a better way to store this?
My thought process:
Picked up a pay stub dated for this year. Yes, I should keep this until tax time. I would notice when I did my taxes. Yes, I could store it digitally as a PDF file.
Repeat that for every piece of paper or item in a room, and you’ll quickly realize how much Stuff you can get rid of. The best part is that almost nothing was really that hard to throw away. Just ask yourself relevant questions about the item and make a decision. Don’t spend an hour thinking it over.
So far, I’ve completely filled two trash bags with shredded documents, notebooks from my freshman year of high school, and other random crap like receipts. I’m still not done – there are a few more things that need to be collected and looked over. But I am more relaxed. My room is way less cluttered and I can find anything I may need in less than a minute.
Today is Friday. The weekend will start in just a few hours. Why not finally get a room, office, or garage cleaned up and organized?
