Msmarieh, thanks for starting the thread!

I'm glad to hear that you've made such progress already. I feel like I achieved my aim for January, which was as much about developing good habits for dealing with emails, etc. (the "do it now" approach) as it was about clearing the electronic piles. Now to keep it up...

February is the snail mail pile and the general paper piles we tend to accumulate in each room. Clearing is the issue, but not the only issue. Something is not right about how we're dealing with paper or we wouldn't be accumulating these bits and pieces so consistently.

We struggle as well with paperwork. Since I have now gotten that home office all cleaned up, the thought of preventing it from happening again has been on my mind.

One of the steps I have taken to reduce the incoming paperwork is that I have contacted all my credit cards / financial accounts, etc. to request electronic billing. Now I need to set up a method for saving those on a monthly basis. But I'm hoping this will dramatically reduce the paper clutter!

I have also dropped most of my magazine subscriptions as I found I wasn't using a lot of them.

Finally I went to the DMA sites where you sign up to be removed from mailing lists and added my information there.

It's definitely tapering off. :)

For the paper that DOES come in, I got a 12 month accordian folder and am sticking things in there as they come in. I'll either file them later where they belong upstairs or I'll store the entire file with my taxes at the end of the year. Either way, they won't wander all over the house the way they have been in the past.

Well, I've spent a little over 16 hours in my basement so far during the last few weeks (generally an hour a day).

Got the Christmas, canning, homebrew, gifts, gardening (seed starting), bulk/excess purchases (like TP, paper towels), baskets/containers/etc., decorating and emergency kits all organized so far.

Still working on the household/tools/paints, exercise stuff, and my craft area. Picked up several new shelving units and various sizes of totes to organize the stuff.

Have a small amount of boxes to break down and take out for recycling. Will also be dropping off a dozen or so boxes to goodwill this weekend (of which about half are from the basement).

Looks like I should be able to finish up this weekend. :) I'm really excited.

How are the rest of you doing? Have you started on your February projects yet?

Everything is done in the basement except my craft area (which is relatively minor). I'll finish that up here and there over the next few days.

I'm now ready to move on to Hubby's Home Office. I told him I want it cleaned out before the end of the month. My goal is to make him responsible for it and I will only provide support and guidance for how to organize it, but by golly, he WILL start working on it or else!!!

He knows I have been in a productive mood lately and he's basically been trying to stay out of my way. Why is it we are never in a productive mood at the same time??? Is that some obscure law of nature???

Truthfully, hubby and I don't really work well together on organizing projects. Our styles are simply way too different and we drive each other nuts and end up fighting. It's much better to just say: You are responsible for this half, and I am responsible for that half and it just needs to get done!

I have a friend that I get together with once a month to do organizing/house/canning/baking/etc. projects with. She and I work really well together. She has the same problem of not being able to do these kinds of projects with her significant other.

msmarieh, you are very lucky to have a friend close by with whom you can do these kinds of projects - I envy you in a good way!

Maria

Yes, it definitely is nice. I've let her off the hook with doing these organizing projects myself, but I fully expect to utilize her when I go back and paint all the rooms! :)

For the moment, I'm holding off on hubby's home office. Will probably start working on it next week instead.

I needed a little break, so this week I have been focusing on cleaning up my emails. I am involved in a number of different organizations plus I subscribe to several different listservs. So in addition to having a number of different email addresses, I literally receive probably more than 100 emails a day. I have been working my way through my various folders. I have deleted more than 10,000 emails this week. Waaaa hoo!!!! Still more to go though. I'm also going through my archived folders to see what old emails can be deleted.

MsMarieh,

Congrats on your organizing projects. Last weekend, I cleaned up my home desk. Wrote some cards I'd been postponing and paid the bills (even though they aren't due until March).

But the cool thing is that DH finally cleaned his desk. Must be the first time in several years. He is going skiing the end of the month, and I told him if he did not clean it before he left, I would clean it while he is gone.
He got every single thing off his desk. Only thing is, the miscellaneous stuff got tossed into a shoebox. So I hope he sorts through that box this weekend.

I need to go through my emails too. Did the HS reunion last summer, which generated a lot of emails, and I have not taken the time to open each to see if I need to record any info before deleting. That will be time consuming.

Ok, I have knocked down a second item from my list for February, which was "#6 Translate 7 texts for Easter 2011". Therefore, this is going well.

My friend at work asked me to come in and see her 2,5 yr old Son's room to help her organize and decorate it. I'm so excited! I gave her my ideas and she got excited too. Now she has to do some decluttering and I will do some crafts for the decorating part and we'll do some shopping together for underbed boxes and curtains and carpet... yay! Love this kind of stuff!

Maria