Cut and Paste

My SisterFriend set a schedule for herself and her kids this June that gave each weekday a theme:
Make-It Monday (making something crafty or from-scratch)
Low-Tech Tuesday (a day with little time spent on technology)
Wet Wednesday (pool time!)
Thoughtful Thursday (doing something for someone else just because)
Free Friday (no big plans)

How creative.  How inventive.  How "I-better-get-a-plan-cause-school's-out-and-I'm-about-to-be-outnumbered".  Whatever the motivation, I think it's brilliant and that our zoo-crew may put a spin on something like this for the remainder of the summer.

If I had thought about it earlier, I would have gotten her to write a guest blog and talk about how this schedule went in the month of June.  Today was her final official June 2011 Make-It Monday.  I wonder what she did today...

Here's what I did.

I have been working to carve out and sharpen up our home office.  Our house has a formal dining room that we use as the library.  This room is definitely at the tippy-top of my list of favorite things about our house.  By no means is it a big room, but there is just something about it.  It is warm and cozy.  We all seem to pile into it on occasion; to read or color or listen to records or watch fish swim or all of the above.  It's a great room.  And it is an ideal space to incorporate a workspace into because of its warmth and comfort, and because the kids can pile in and stay occupied while we work.  That last point is pretty important because no matter what we try, the kids can't be kept away for long.  Where we are, they are there.  How sweet.  How suffocating.  How short-term.  I will enjoy it - or at least make it work - while it lasts.

One of my website regulars over the past few years has been The Unclutterer.  I enjoy the site so much that I bought the ebook about a year ago.  One of the concepts she introduces is having a "landing strip" in the house that is designated as a sort of catch-all for when you come in the door - mail, papers to be filed, keys, electronics charging station, etc.  We have a cut-through from a hallway into our library that is the perfect space for a landing strip.  From the beginning of living here, that is exactly where we have designated the landing strip to be.  The breakdown, however, is that the other elements of organization - a desk in our bedroom and a filing cabinet in our closet - were nowhere near the landing strip.  Even utilizing the landing strip concept, we still had no central "office".  This translates into things landing on the landing strip but never making the way to their final destinations, i.e. papers to be filed never getting filed because nobody wants to lug them from the landing strip to the closet, etc.  Today, I remedied all of that.

The desk and filing cabinet now happily live in the library - this sweet, inspirational, convenient space full of antiquities of our own past and the pasts of others.  Bringing it all together into the room makes too much sense and seemed right from the second the epiphany struck.  I love the idea of sitting in that room and writing, filing, sorting, and keeping order of our personal affairs.  What I didn't love was the eye-sore of a filing cabinet in this room that holds all kinds of unique, sentimental, and nostalgic bits of life.  I want the room to be functional as an office, but I don't want to lose the charm that the room has held for us by filling it up with cold, uncreative pieces.

 

I know it's just a filing cabinet, and a filing cabinet does not necessarily a room make or break.  But we can do better than this, I think.  A little thought later, I pulled out some supplies I already had and got to work transforming the cabinet.

The supplies: decorative paper, glue, scissors, and
paint brushes

 This was nothing more than a decoupage project, really.  I tore paper at my own whim, sort of got an idea where I wanted to paste it, painted glue on the back of the paper, and stuck it to the filing cabinet.

Painting the glue on the paper

The first piece applied

 
I continued tearing and gluing paper, layering it up on the cabinet.  On the top of the cabinet I chose to put a map of Prince Edward Island, one of my favorite I've-never-been-but-you-can-bet-your-booty-I'm-going places.  Once all of the paper was glued into place, I sealed it all with an application of enamel glaze I had left from centuries-old crafting projects.

After I sealed everything, I wanted a slightly more finished look to the cabinet, so I decided to paint the trim of the cabinet in black.  I knew black acrylic paint would easily peel off of the metal cabinet.  I tried a Sharpie but realized quickly that wasn't going to cut it.  Determined not to have to leave the house or purchase anything for this little impromptu project, I got creative and pulled out this...

Yep, black nail polish did the trick.

I couldn't be more pleased with the total finished product.

I remembered I had xeroxed copies of some Athens, Ga. history on
Ma Luffin' Mayun's family.  I added them to the cabinet.

So, once again, everything old is new again.  I love how something so simple can bring change in just the right dose.  And I love this room.  Here's to more time spent within it's walls, reading, writing, laughing, and living.

my helper

...and don't believe everything you read.  I assure you,
it was her.

Because Being A Responsible Adult Dictates NOT Filing Everything In File Thirteen

Well, that pretty much sums it up, don't you think?

No? Okay. Then here's a post.

I hate paper. Not really. I mean, I actually love paper - stationary, paper with designs, pages of books, toilet paper (arguably THE best kind of paper). But I do hate the stacks of paper that have accumulated around Quaint Cottage because nobody knows quite what to do with them (what's the statute of limitations on banes of one's existence?). Since I truly can't trash it all (dagnabit) there has to be, once again, a winnowing and a system implemented. So here we go again.

I tend to not want to conform (read: stubborn streak) to any particular system(s) of someone else's for pretty much anything. I guess I subscribe, at least in part, to the idea that I need to try to custom-make ideas and systems so they best suit my personhood and those of the FabFive. Sometimes that's peachy. Other times it's nothing more than reinventing the wheel and, truthfully, a bit sanctimonious. I realize there are times when I need to bump custom-making and choose customizing...taking someone else's already-thought-through, very good idea and tweak it only enough to fit our lives and purposes. This realization is serving me quite well in accomplishing the annihilation of paper piles (I.like.alliteration).

Having fought this paperwork battle for long days, a couple of years ago I worked hard on setting up a two-drawer filing cabinet. I was very thoughtful in what I made a file folder for in an attempt to keep the filing system from being overwhelming (custom-made). Everything does not need a file folder (read: movie stubs from every movie seen in 1993). In addition to the file cabinet each family member has a mementos box for things that don't necessarily need to be filed, but want to be held on to for sentimental reasons (read: movie stubs from every movie seen in 1993).

This part of the system, the resting place for all of the papers, is well intact and really set up nicely. But guess what (chicken butt)? Nothing ever gets to the filing cabinet. Guess why (chicken thigh)? Because there's no system at the entry level of the paperwork process other than to stack it all until it falls over and somebody gets angry enough to, well, usually, just stack it up again. Angrily. Grrr. Hmph. Argh. Sigh. (That's the sound of the poor sap who's addition to the precarious paper pile finally made it tumble, and is therefore responsible for picking it up...in case you were wondering.)

Clearly, if I knew how to custom-make a workable step at the front end of the paperwork system I would have done it by now. But I don't, and I haven't. So I did what all self-respecting persons needing some sound advice do in times of need: I googled it. Here's what I found, this awesome six file fix. In a nutshell, here's how it breaks down (STOP! Hammertime!):
Comprised of six files labeled as follows -
-Bills (for only unpaid bills)
-To Be Filed (for papers that have a folder in the file cabinet)
-Dated Information (for anything that is time-sensitive)
-To Be Read (for those letters or articles or newsletters that you intend to read at a later time)
-To Be Given Away (for letters or articles or newsletters that you intend to pass along to someone else)
-Unsure (for those papers that you aren't sure you need to keep, but aren't sure you can throw away)

Here's what I did. I created these folders and put them in a small, portable file box.




The file box lives under the computer, bottom left, which is now in the corner of the kitchen (instead of the laundry room).


I also reworked the recycling system so that there were smaller bins by the trash can for our recyclable paper and plastic (the additional, oh, I don't know, 12 steps it takes to throw the recycling in the bins in the laundry room were apparently too much). The contents of the smaller recycle bins are transferred to the large recycle bins when they are full. In addition, I put the paper shredder at this trash/recycle station (out of Little Big Man's reach, I assure you).


With these changes made I can now IMMEDIATELY throw away unwanted paper(s) into recycling, shred sensitive documents (doesn't that sound mysterious?), and then use the six file fix for everything else. And remember, if there are any papers being saved simply because of sentimentality (cards, letters, awards from school, etc.) they get put into the Us's momentos box.

I took a stack of papers that I promise you was atleast twelve inches high, and was able to completely winnow and properly file it in less than thirty minutes (that's why the picture of the six-file box looks full already). Since "unsure" is the label we could've stuck on over half the papers in the stack, I didn't let myself use the Unsure folder. If I was unsure I made myself get sure because enough is enough. That was liberating!

A couple of special notes...If the system is going to work, the To Be Filed Folder has to make it to the file cabinet to BE filed. There needs to be some sort of regular reminder to check the Dated Information file so things are not overlooked, forgotten, or neglected. And if anything is filed in the Unsure folder, you are to date it and THROW IT OUT if nothing has been done with it after three months.

I took it one step further and applied the six file fix to my email, too.


Bills became Blogs, Bills, Passwords
To Be Filed became To Be Printed and Filed
To Be Given Away became To Forward
...and I eliminated Unsure from the choices (only on email).

To additionally cut down on paper, I signed up for e-billing on everything I possibly could.

So there you go. A customization of someone else's really good idea. Afterall, sometimes my efforts to try to come up with solutions someone else has already found is a lot like chaff. And we don't want that now, do we? It's also nice to be reminded sometimes that I can be full of garbage, full of it; that I could use some help; that I don't have the best way or all the answers; that somebody else's good idea may be the best idea.

Hence, hats off (or trash can lids) to the six file fix! Quite a fix, indeed.

Happy sifting, homeskillets.