I spent part of a day last week cleaning up the garage. The garage is solely for vehicles or a tractor I use during the winter months. In the summer I run in the lawn mower, garden tiller and things I want to keep out of the rain. It’s more of a work shop to repair things. But come winter, the small engine machines are put away and it becomes a place for the car, truck or a tractor.
I find it amusing, and puzzling, that so many people park their vehicles outside all the time because their garage is a storage place for other possessions and it’s full of clutter.
Rainy days are great for catching up on things that we don’t find time to do when we are busy with more important jobs. Whether it’s doing repairs in the farm shop, bookkeeping, running errands, cleaning up the shop or office, it’s a worthwhile task that needs to be done on a regular basis.
I read a lot and throw out the things I know I won’t be looking at again. Sometimes it seems that the biggest crop in farming is all the papers, paperwork and magazines that build up if they don’t get immediate attention. Whether your office space is in a corner of the kitchen, a spare bedroom or out in the shop, chances are things are piling up. You know you should get organized someday, but you’re too busy and you just can’t find the time.
Waiting for the right time is part of the problem. That’s why I pick rainy days. In all likelihood, “someday” will never come. It’s better to attack the problem one step at a time, breaking it down into manageable changes in your work habits that you can make as you go along.
Paper seems to have a built-in ability to hypnotize normally efficient and businesslike people. They can easily waste precious time by picking up a piece of paperwork, thinking about it, setting it aside, returning to it, staring at it some more and putting it on a pile, never stopping to make a decision. Sound familiar?
Experts on decluttering say there are some cardinal rules to paper sorting that helps keep your office or your house neat and tidy looking.
• Eighty percent of everything that is filed is never looked at again.
• Half of what is currently filed could just as well be destroyed or moved to long-term storage making it easier to find your frequently used files.
• Try to touch each item only once. In other words, make sure the things you don’t need don’t get filed in the first place. Take the time to sort out daily mail, bills, tax matters, magazines, and other papers — once. It will pay off in the long run.
There are also people who are on the other extreme. They have their house spotless and there’s never any clutter. It’s almost as if they don’t read newspapers and magazines and no junk mail comes to their place because there isn’t a thing lying around.
