My Paperless-ish Home
Despite living in a digital world, the inundation of paper in our lives seems to be relentless. Committing to going paperless-(ish) is a combination of ruthlessness and a system. We are ruthless about what paper we allow into our home, but more importantly what we let linger in our home. I’m talking about the junkmail placed on the counter, the old birthday card still sitting on the shelf, the appointment card for the dentist, kid’s school work, the free calendar and the instruction manual for a cordless vacuum. But let’s put my thoughts on ruthlessness aside for now and focus on the paperless-ish system that works for my house to manage the daily influx of paper. I’m going to share with you the digital and physical core elements that make up our paperless system, the initial process of setting it up and ongoing maintenance.
Core Elements
Digital
iCalendar
1Password Management (see full blog post for more details)
iCloud Storage
Physical
Command Centre
Scanner
Firesafe Box
Initial Set up
A guiding principle of my organizing process is to find a home for every item you own. Paper is no exception, but does require a unique system to handle the ebb and flow of paper.
I began the process by assessing where paper naturally tended to pile up - a kitchen counter - and that was where the command centre would be. If the kitchen is the heart of the home, the command centre is the brain! The idea of a command centre was largely influenced by Organize 365’s Sunday Basket System - the idea of gathering incoming paper into one spot and establishing a routine for processing it.
I then took a full inventory of any other paper in our house and began the sorting process. Piles seemed to naturally sort into the following categories:
long term storage - ex. medical records or mortgage paperwork
waiting action - ex. my dog’s certificate of vaccination I need to bring to the groomers next week
action needed - ex. our RRSP slips for our taxes
junk (immediately recycled) - ex. expired coupons with no personal information
Long term storage was either scanned or stored in our fire safety box (ex. Checks, passports, certificates). Items that were scanned, relevant information was stored in our 1Password management system for quick on-the-go access (ex. school board login credentials) and a copy in our iCloud storage. The paper was shredded, or a copy stored in the fire safety box if necessary. The shredder, scanner and fire safety box are all stored in the home office area.
The command centre was now left with paper that was an ongoing project or was waiting-action. Similar to the Sunday Basket System, I decided to use a slash pocket system to organizing the various projects, as well as a magazine rack to hold my slash pocket system and other electronic devices, in the command centre.
Ongoing maintenance
Any organizational system requires maintenance, as well as the entire household to be onboard! Here are a few examples of ways we maintain our system:
Events: With the icalendar, we say no to any appointment card and it goes right into our shared family calendar.
Daily Mail: Junk mail goes right onto the recycling, all other mail is opened as soon as possible and finds a home in the command centre slash pocket.
Instruction Manuals: Google usually finds the instruction manual faster than I could go get it from any system, so those typically get recycled immediately. We do have a drawer of ziplock bags for “spare parts” of various appliances and gadgets in our house that don’t have their own storage system, so if necessary, any paperwork gets stored with the spare parts.
Are you reading this and thinking, yeah but what do you do with this kind of paper?! Email me at sortedspruce@gmail.com and I’d love to connect and chat about a system that would work for you!
