10 Paper Clutter Items To Toss Today To Declutter Your Life

Do you struggle with paper clutter in your office and home? Paper clutter is the most popular area that becomes overwhelming for most people. Regardless of where the paper shows up, many people are confused about the rules of what to keep and when to toss items. So, paper clutter is often a common pain point for many! When you run a business, you have the added dimension of paper clutter for your business. It can easily become overwhelming if you ignore the tried-and-true rules of decluttering. If you’re struggling with paper clutter in your home or office, it’s time to get yourself out from under the paper clutter monster! So, follow these helpful guidelines to declutter and release what you no longer need.

Throw these 10 items away to declutter your life today!/paper clutter/sanespaces.com — Image Source: Canva

1. Receipts not necessary for tax or warranty purposes

One of the easiest ways to get out from under paper clutter is to do a quick ‘purse dump’. Flip that purse and start purging! Some people keep receipts for everything. When I’ve taken a casual poll of my friends, the reason people keep receipts indefinitely is that they often don’t know the rules for receipts, or have no maintenance system to flush out their old receipts. The only receipts that you need to keep are those relating to warranties, insurance, or taxes. All others can be tossed in the trash after you’re sure you’ve been charged correctly for services or products. For most of us, charges appear on our monthly statements. So, having a monthly check and balance routine can help you manage your receipts. If you keep receipts for budgeting purposes, make a weekly time to go through them and record them either on paper or on software to keep track of expenses. Throw away the receipts when you finish. Here’s a helpful link to review if you’re stuck on what to keep and what to let go of.

2. Warranties and manuals for items you no longer own

When it comes to decluttering your home and office, warranties and manuals for common office and household products can take up to 50% of file cabinet space. So many people are turning to the electronic versions of manuals once only available on paper. One of the best ways to store warranty information or manuals is to use a binder with clear plastic sleeves. OR, see if these items have online archives of manuals. If so, toss the manuals, note the location to find them online, and only keep the tax information related to an item (receipt, photo, warranty information) together in one sleeve in your file cabinet. Then when something breaks down and you need to retrieve the information it will all be stored together.

3. Coupons

I love saving money, and I grew up in a coupon-family. Mom would spend hours pouring over the weekly papers to select which stores to visit weekly. Alas, paper coupons are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Many coupons that people keep on hand are expired. (In fact, if you’re carrying some now, check them for expiration dates. If they have expired or even if they are close to expiration, toss them.) If you want to let go of unwanted paper items, go through your coupons and toss the ones that aren’t needed or are expired. Coupon organizers can help you sift through coupons you will really use, or better yet, get into the habit of downloading coupons as part of your shopping routine. Today there are online search tools and services like coupons.com that make coupons available as you need them. Only look for coupons when you need to replenish your supplies and you can let go of a lot of paper clutter.

4. Recipes you haven’t used or don’t plan to

If you cut out every recipe that looks good, you may have a stack to try someday, that you’ll never get around to. Be selective and throw out recipes you won’t get around to using. Most recipes are available online today. In fact, if you’re out of ideas on what to make for dinner, you can even grab your iPad or phone and enter your raw ingredients on hand. This article reviews 10 apps that can make a master chef out of a beginner! With online information like this, who needs those online recipes? Remember, the key to this type of paper clutter is you must decide if you are going to use the recipe in the future. If so, create a binder for easy reference, scan it and keep it in a cloud-based accessible file, and let go of the rest!

5. Business cards

Despite the immense number of apps and contact info available today, the good old business card is still going strong. In fact, many people have stacks of business cards sitting around from events long past. So, from here – take a look at your business card archives and determine if you even remember the event/situation in which you connected. If so, scan that information into your contact database now. And, if you have a stockpile to catch up on, make a future date with yourself to get this task done once-and-for-all. And, after future networking events, go through your business cards collected and enter any pertinent contacts into your database, with a note on how you met them. For more best practices regarding business cards and resetting after travel, see my blog post here.

6. Catalogs and old magazines

If you have stacks of magazines cluttering your living space, consider weeding out the number of copies you keep. Try cutting out only the articles you really want. Then you can easily store them together in a labeled information folder… but ONLY if you feel you‘ll refer to them again. If information is redundant anywhere else (or could be found elsewhere) don‘t keep it! If you’d like to unsubscribe from catalogs and mailings, you can try an online service like PaperKarma. PaperKarma is a free app that makes it super easy to stop catalog and junk mail delivery. With PaperKarma, you simply snap a picture of the address label. They contact that company to have your name removed from their list. Or, simply go online to the source. Many times you receive catalogs as a result of being registered on an online retail site. Each outlet has contact information available to help you unsubscribe, and if all else fails, do a quick online search to find your answer.

7. Every piece of ‘art’ your children have given you

I started saving every piece of my son‘s work when he started preschool and quickly realized that I would never be able to save everything through to his graduation. One way to try to reduce paper is to pick out the important papers and projects to keep regualrly. In fact, I‘ve framed some of my son’s most special pieces in basic black frames and display them in our family room. They are a really beautiful touch and once framed make the children feel so accomplished! Big bulky projects may not be able to be saved, instead consider taking a picture, and journaling about the project. Or, purchase an Artist Sketch Pad and use it as an Art Scrapbook to hold and journal about the different artwork. A big artist sketch pad will allow you to keep important event information in one centralized place and makes a nice book. Any outdated information or papers that have no purpose.

8. Announcements that have passed

If you save event announcements in the hopes that you’ll remember to go, you may have a lot of flyers hanging around in various piles in your home or office. Take a look around and instead of gathering more paper in your space, simply grab your phone. Once you have your phone in hand, take a picture and then create a date with yourself on your mobile calendar. Then, you can either avoid picking paper announcements up altogether in the future. From now on all you’ll need is to add the date and time information to your calendar for future events. This will allow you to toss all the flyers.

9. Marketing and direct mail pieces

If direct mail marketing continues to land in your mailbox, you may want to start unsubscribing to these services to reduce paper clutter. Nearly every product or service available today has one. Direct mail has become increasingly less desirable as more products become available online. The average consumer is becoming more shopping-savvy and the current thrust is to simply order online. One great way to start unsubscribing is to sign up with an automatic service such as Directmail.com, or catalogchoice.org.

10. Textbooks and books you’ve read

By now, you probably realize that the inspiration for this post came from looking around my own home office! Well, I’m raising my hand here too! I have MANY old textbooks, resources, and books that have taken up loads of space on my shelves. (Although, I truly do like to blame this one all on my hubby!) The problem with holding onto old textbooks is that they become part of your ‘decor’. It’s as if you’ve assumed responsibility for all these things, and now you must store them, and display them for use. The only reason to keep old books or textbooks is if you’re likely to need that information in the near future. Or, you may have irreplaceable information that can only be found in books. But the key is to determine if the information within is available elsewhere. IF so, let them go.

Conclusion

By letting go of the 10 paper items that cause you to feel cluttered, you’ll ease up storage space. You’ll also lose weight and feel lighter. If you’re not sure of what to let go of, work with an accountability buddy. And, if you have a hard time determining what is most important to keep, try our organizing personality assessment – the TSSI. This quiz easily pinpoints your productivity personality traits (and subsequent blind spots). Using your results to take baby steps that create more flow and organized living.