The Paper Purge Is Complete!!

I officially wrapped up my paper purge yesterday! Can I get a high five? It feels amazing to have reached the end of the month a few days earlier with less paper being stored in our desk, filing cabinet, file boxes and apparently in an Army footlocker.

Yesterday, I finished the project by going through several more files. These included going through our instruction manuals again. I was able to purge quite a few more after looking them up on Manuals Lib and saving them to my free account. I found more this time around that were completely unnecessary! Funny how the first time some items don't stand out.

I also had several documents I had set aside to scan and save on our computer. I took care of that task yesterday as well and then was able to shredded and recycle another stack of paper! While I was at my desk scanning I realized I could shred receipts from October (something I usually do near the first of the month), so I took care of that. I also found some other things to purge: the box from Christmas cards, empty box from photo paper (I combined two boxes), an old school address book, and several odd notes laying around. I even put a colored pencil that has been separated from its mates for years in the right place!

I noticed that most of the receipts were for cash and groceries
and thus could have been purged awhile ago!

I did save those four cards in with the Christmas decorations

To feel like I really purged all possible paper, I took a few minutes to look through coupons and other various papers on our kitchen counter. Of course, I found several things to get rid of. I even decided to 'save the date' for an event on my computer rather than keep the postcard around for more than six months!

Before picture...it is still kind of messy here. Oh well!

My final task was to put the files that were still laying around back in the filing cabinet. There were just three files, but it had to be done to call this a complete task. I also decided that I would put my tax file away too. It was out because I'm still working on our taxes, but I wanted it to feel like a clean slate.

So drum roll...the final pictures of our files. I pushed the files tight to show how much room there is!

The green file and those behind it are all empty!

The files on the bottom and to the right are all from the boxes we them in

I wonder if I could ever get down to one file? Don't laugh! I'm serious. :)

And just for fun and because it looks good I'm going to show you a couple pictures of my desk!

I was about to take the picture of below my desk (shown above) and that is when I saw those Christmas cards! I'm glad I saw them and could get them to a better place.  I like how clean the surface of that pull out tray is! I was storing those tax files there when I decided to put them in my desk file. Much better!

I'm happy dancing that the paper purge of 2015 is complete! I hope I don't have to take an entire month ever again to work on paper. I will say it was well worth it. We worked several hours at a time on some days, a few minutes on others and even were kind to ourselves and skipped some days. There is no way this could have been completed in a day or even a week, the month goal was just right for this project. I'm sure I could have dragged it out even longer, but that is where a deadline is helpful to keep moving along on the goal.

Did you make progress on your January goal? Are you still working on your goal? Did you give yourself a deadline? Will you continue purging and decluttering into February? Regardless, if you did anything to make your home a better place to live this month I'm proud of you! All progress counts. We will just keep moving forward at our own pace. And it's all good!

I hope to chime in on Saturday with some thoughts on my goals for February. If I don't...I will definitely be back on Monday!