Confessions Of A Paper Hoarder

I'm a recovering paper hoarder. I admit it.

As long as I can think, I've been a paper aficionado. Or is it aficionada?

(Heck, I had three years of Spanish in high school - only about 25 years ago - and I seem to have lost most of it!)

The most prominent proof is probably my Filofax. Or rather my collection of Filofaxes.

Being a postcrosser could also count. I still have every postcard I got since I started in 2013.


Or writing Christmas cards.

Or the stacks of magazines in our living room. (Though Schatz is worse when it comes to this.)


Or the fact that I've chosen the profession of a lawyer. We love our files. And our books. And our magazines.

Or my collection of scrapbook paper, though I'm not a scrapbooker. Not really.

Or my genealogy papers. Quite a few binders... and several extra piles of paper, more or less neatly held together by binder clips.You can never have too many binder clips, can you?

Or my love for post-it notes in various designs.

Or the sagging bookshelves in various rooms of our house. 

Or the fact that I still own my personal calendar of the year 2000. (Which was a good year, by the way!)

Put together on one huge pile in our living room on the first floor, this paper monster would probably crash through the wooden ceiling of this lovely more-than-a-hundred-years old house. And I really don't want to be the one responsible for destroying a home that's been in the family for about a whole century. So Marie Kondo's advice on dealing with all of this in one huge session wouldn't work, even if I left out the books. Additionally, I'd simply feel so overwhelmed that I'd probably leave the paper pile for a month and then finally set it on fire out of pure frustration. 

So what are the consequences?

It's simple: I'll get rid of a few kilograms - of paper, that is. But not in a single session. Pile by pile, shelf by shelf, binder clip by binder clip, file by file. I'll keep what I like and need, and as I have a wonderfully working scanner, I'll scan a lot and toss the originals. Welcome to the 21st century. It's possible to store papers without storing paper.

Actually, I've already started. But there's still enough left to work on. 

Keep me accountable!

When Your Garbage Disposal System Turns Out To Be Your Worst Enemy...

Do you remember that I started uncluttering my CD/DVD collection last weekend?

Well, seems like I've found the flaw in Marie Kondo's book. 

Sure enough, I had no problem to decide which ones to keep and which ones had to go. I even found a good home for some of them in my parents' and in my in-laws' homes.

My problems started after I had divided the discs into three different piles: To keep, to give away, and to toss. You just don't want to give self-burnt CDs to a charity.

Problem No. 1: Not all the CDs were in their appropriate jewel cases. So to find the ones I wanted to keep and those to donate, I had to go through all the jewel cases. Argh! It all comes back to you at some point...

Problem Nr. 2: If you haven't lived in Germany for a while, you guys have no idea how complicated to German garbage disposal system is... just throw everything into one single bag and put it into the trash can? No way! Most packaging materials (except paper) go into the yellow trash can, plastic for example. But guess what? The jewel cases are considered packaging materials, but the discs aren't. Which means I had to take all the discs I wanted to get rid of out of their cases. So you could think that the discs can go into the "general" trash can, which is grey over here. No, they shouldn't, because the material as such is considered recycable. So some of the towns here have set up extra CD and DVD collection stations, for example in schools or in the city hall. And guess what? I'm not going to school any more, I don't have kids who go to school, and I need to go to city hall maybe once a year. Do I really want to waste some time and gas to go on a trip to the city hall just to get rid of a bag of CDs?!

The answer was: No...!!!

So I'm still thinking about smuggling that bag into the trash can for packaging materials...

Just the thought of that complicated process of getting rid of the stuff made me stop for a while. A few days, actually. Two piles of jewel cases were sitting on our living room floor until I finally brought myself to tackle them today. It took a while, but finally, the "to toss" jewel cases went to the appropriate trash can, the discs I want to donate are in my "to give away" bag, and the keepers are stored safely as well. Just that relatively small bag with the "to trash" discs is sitting in a corner and grinning at me, waiting impatiently for me to make a decision...

Bottom line: I don't have any problems to decide what to keep and what to throw away. I can discard things I no longer need pretty easily. It's just overwhelmingly difficult to find the right way to get rid of the trash...!  

I guess Marie Kondo hadn't thought of that...

Christmas Countdown 2015 - Part 1

Totensonntag, the last Sunday before Advent (the sunday on which the dead are commemorated), has come and gone, which means that Christmas isn't that far away any more. In a month, it'll me Christmas Eve!

I suppose it's similar in all the families, but as I learned it from my Mom who learned it from my grandmother (who probably learned it from her mother):  

You just don't start decorating before Totensonntag! 

No way! No matter what! And no matter what other people do.

I stick to that rule, though every year around Totensonntag, the decorating fever gets hold of me. You see so many nice decorations everywhere you look, on the web, in magazines, in stores, in books... there's no chance to escape the inspiration! 

So during the past two days, some tiny Christmas items have popped up in our living room... I hadn't planned to get anything new this year except the candles for our advent wreath (hello - after all, I'm in the process of decluttering the house!!!). But then, when I went candle shopping, i just couldn't resist to get a few more tiny things...

Sometimes you just need to treat youself to something new. And I'm sure these tiny things will make wonderful memories!

I downloaded Marie Kondo's book.

Yes, I did. Though I had vowed NOT to read another organizing book. I've read quite a lot of them, and I even got rid of some of them this year because they turned out to be... clutter! They took up space in my bookshelf and caught dust. But after taking a virtual sneak peek into the book Friday afternoon, I thought, well, it seems to work for a lot of people, so I should at least take a look at it.

I downloaded "The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying-Up" onto Schmidt (my Kindle), so even if I decide not to try Marie's method, I won't have another piece of clutter on my bookshelf. Ha. I could keep it in my cloud if I wanted to without ever having to look at it again.

I started reading Friday night, cuddled up in my bed. And guess what happened? I fell asleep after about two minutes. Seriously. I guess I was just too tired and my brain simply shut down. Luckily, Schatz (my significant other of a little more than 20 years now) was so nice to take Schmidt out of my hands before it crashed on the floor (once again).

Yesterday, we spent a very joyful and funny evening at some friends' place (which was very tidy btw, though they have three children), had a very tasty dinner and kept sitting at the table afterwards until about 11.30 p.m. A short time after coming home, I cuddled up again in my bed, Schmidt in hand, and gave Marie's book another try.

This time, I managed about 25 minutes, but that's only a guess. I fell asleep again, Schmidt still in hand... and I dreamed about decluttering my CD and DVD collection, although I hadn't read anything about silver discs so far! I saw myself going through them all, and in my dream I remember I was thinking about getting rid of the Gilmore Girls DVDs that I own (the first five or six seasons). It was one of my favorite TV shows when it aired, but I'm not sure I watched the DVDs in the past few years at all.

When I woke up this morning, I was completely stressed out though I hadn't done any tidying yet. In my dream, I had made so many decisions that I was still tired. Uff.

In the early evening, I started with the DVDs and CDs anyway. Without having read more during the day. I just felt I wanted to come to an end with that strenous dream. Guess what? Yes, I discarded the Gilmore Girls. Grey's Anatomy's first two seasons went with them, as did several others. In the end, I had a nice bag full of silver discs I'm sure I don't have use for any more. And to say it with Marie: No, they don't sparkle joy... at least not anymore.

So there's a new item on my to do list for tomorrow: Finding out what to do with all those discs... which will probably be more complicated than the sorting process.  

How To Get A Man To Work In The Garden

This was actually easier than I thought, though I had some unexpected help:

I should mention in advance that I saw two main problems that yearned for a solution:

a) The leaves that were everywhere (we have quite a lot of trees here, now all almost bare, most of them maple and beech trees, plus some apple and cherry trees and a prominent oak), and

 b) The withered aconite that needed a good cutting. And no, it really didn't look like this anymore. It was a rather sad view..

Problem was, I had to work all day and nowadays, it gets dark pretty early, around 4:30 in the afternoon. This was the only day we had without rain this week, and we're supposed to get the first snow this weekend.

Things really needed to get done.

My Mom, creative as she can be if she only wants to, came up with an idea: Why don't you guys attach the snow shovel to the riding mower and drag the leaves into piles? She mentioned this to my father-in-law, and what happened?

THIS:

Father-in-law loves using the riding mower, and I can see why. It's kind of Zen moving around in circles. Some people doodle, others take a bath or do yoga. Father-in-law mowes the lawn.

Am I the only one who thinks: "Can't Buy Me Love was so unrealistic!"? 

But I don't want to sound ungrateful. I'm really glad that he has both the time and the patience to do it. And the garden looks so much better now!

As for the aconite: My significant other has a penchant for knives though I don't think he has many opportunities to use them. But here I found him one... What can I say? He acted like he had to clear his way through the jungle with a machete. And took some pain relievers for his back afterwards.

Had I just know earlier... but I guess I'll remember this principle from now on:

Make it fun and it will get done!

Plan with me: Planning versus Doing

I love planning. I love planners. 

That's probably the reason why I have so many of them. Moleskines, Filofaxes, you name it. The same goes for notebooks and journals.

Decorating the journals and planners would come with that. Of course.

Now you could think I was a totally organized person. Am I? 

Well... no.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not a total slob. There are areas in my life that work pretty well for me, especially when it comes to my business. It's just that I see quite a lot of room for improvement. 

Planning is a good thing, but what happens when you get stuck there? You spend quite an amount of time on planning (and decorating) sessions, and  your planner looks nothing but awesome. And at the end of the day you sit down and realize that your house doesn't look any better than it did in the morning, and you feel like you haven't accomplished anything at all.

The only conclusion I can come to is that there has to be a systemic error.

You can keep on planning forever, but you actually need to find a way to get your lovely b(...) up from the sofa and get going.

That's my problem. I love planning things, but I can procrastinate the realization of these tasks for quite a while.

Why is that?

It's actually pretty simple - I have too much physical stuff in my life. I often feel overwhelmed when I look at all that - well, clutter. I don't see too many empty surfaces here in our house...

I decided it's time to make a change. My 42nd birthday was a good start.

So my goal is to have my stuff in order the day I turn 43.  

Let's get started, shall we?