The KonMari Method: Paper

Today I tackle the third category of the Konmari Method: Paper. Here is how I went about it, and I break it down into a helpful guideline for you.

The dreaded third category of the Konmari Method, Paper, is finally here. It’s unarguably the most tedious and boring category of them all. It’s the one you have to get through before you can finally tackle the rest of your house.

Yet it really needs to be done. Papers can get out of hand easily and pile up quickly. If you haven’t decluttered your papers in awhile, you may discover you have far more than you think.

I used to be a bit of a paper hoarder. I had an entire box, still taped together from various moves, full of notes and notebooks from college. Then there were the folders and random papers containing notes and ideas for writing projects. (If I get an idea, I’ll write it down on whatever scrap of paper I can find at the moment so I don’t forget. This led to tons of papers, of various shapes and sizes, full of random fragments of ideas and inspiration.)

I have two binders of recipes cut out of magazines. They’re separated by the ones I use regularly and the ones I haven’t tried. I also have a binder of other magazine clippings I want to keep. (Nevermind my many Pinterest boards online!)

Then there’s the more important papers: tax forms, checkbook registers, 401k paperwork, papers from the hospital from my childrens’ births.

Luckily for me, I tackled the vast majority of my papers last year when I did a major declutter of the Room of Crap. While I did need to go through everything again, Konmari style, there was a lot less to deal with. In the interest of helping you out when you reach this category of the method, I will detail for you how I dealt with my papers both during my Konmari and during my previous declutter.

Marie Kondo recommends getting rid of any and all papers except for important documents you need to keep hardcopies of. My view is that you have to go through your own stuff to decide if it’s worth keeping. You may find it helpful to throw everything out, or you may have a lot of papers you want to hang on to, either because you want to reference them, or because they bring you joy.

I suggest that when you do your paper declutter, if you come across any sentimental papers, such as old letters, postcards, or papers from your childhood that you’re attached to, set them aside. Do not read them, do not bother with them now, do not pass go, do not collect $200. They will bog down your progress. These papers fall under the sentimental category, which Marie Kondo has us do last. I recommend putting all sentimental papers you come across into their own box or folder until you get to the fifth category.

Recipes and Magazine Clippings

The papers I have the most of: recipes.

I keep recipes I’ve taken out of magazines, print outs from online, and recipes I’ve typed up and printed out. Oh, and let’s not forget the recipes I write down on small pads of paper and then put into my recipe binder. (Those are either recipes I’ve created or ones I’ve jotted down from watching YouTube videos.) Yeah, I need to type those up too.

I love to try new recipes, and I’m a sucker for recipes out of magazines. (Real Simple magazine usually has really great ones.) I have two binders full of recipes. One has the recipes I use the most often, the other has recipes I haven’t tried yet but want to.

Last summer I went through my recipe hoard and discarded the ones that I’d most likely never get to or that definitely didn’t spark joy anymore. I still kept a lot of recipes, because they sparked joy, but the secondary binder is much slimmer now. If I want to pick a new recipe to try out of there, I can easily find one.

More recently I went through my frequently-used recipe binder and pulled out recipes that I no longer make. These were the recipes that I made once and thought it was decent enough to earn a place in the binder, but that I never went back and made again. If I skip over a recipe many times in favor of a different one, then I know I won’t cook that meal again.

I also went through my binder of magazine clippings. Since I don’t look in it much, I could probably toss all of them, right? But I do enjoy the papers with paint swatches (for, you know, when I ever get around to painting something), or with garden plans, or sewing and crafting instructions. They allow me to dream. I got rid of some that were really dated, or that I didn’t particularly like anymore. Then I was able to put in some newer clips that I like better. I sound like a paper hoarder, right?

Old Notebooks and Paper Stationary

It’s up to you if you want to include stationary in the Paper category or if you’d prefer to lump it in with all other stationary (writing implements, stamps, etc.) in the Komono category. I’m writing about them here since I’ve tackled it already.

I took care of all my old notebooks back before I started Konmari, but I’ll tell you what I did.

I had a heavy box full of notebooks and notes from college that I lugged around every time I moved since 2004. Since living in my current home, the box has sat in a closet. I finally took out all the notebooks and went through them.

I had held onto all the notes I took in college, plus the papers I wrote, because it was the tangible result of all my time at those lectures. If I didn’t keep all of the papers, at least I’d keep the notes from my favorite classes.

It turns out that hastily scribbled notes written in my characteristic bad handwriting make very little sense 14 years after graduating. I couldn’t make heads nor tails out of most of the notes I’d taken without the context of the class lectures or textbooks. In the end I discarded all the notebooks except one.

I had a couple of other random notebooks unrelated to college coursework. For some of them, I tore out the used pages and kept the rest.

Another kind of paper stationary I had was blank cards and envelopes. Thank you cards, all occasion cards, etc. These sorts of things are good to have on hand. However, I had quite a lot, because I had also held on to blank cards I received for free (from charity mailings). I went through this hoard and recycled the vast majority of the free stuff. Now if I need to find a blank card, I can easily find one I actually want to send someone.

Documents, Tax Forms, and Other Important Things

I have a shoebox-type storage container that I’ve used for years to keep important paperwork. I kept things like tax forms and used checkbooks in there.

That box had sat unopened for a while. I haven’t worked outside the home in a few years, so I had no reason to look in it.

There were a lot of old W2’s and other boring things that were long past the date I needed to keep them. I shredded them happily.

Now the box is nearly empty, and I could probably move the things in there to hang out with the rest of my miscellaneous paperwork and free up some space.

Random Papers

I dealt with the vast majority of my random papers back when I did the big clean out, but here’s what happened.

I definitely had a lot of random papers. As an aspiring fiction writer, I have tons of random papers with all kinds of random ideas for different stories written on them. These days I try to write all my ideas down in journals or notebooks so they aren’t loose. But I still had a lot of loose papers as well.

All the papers related to one large project got put into their own folder. The other ones got put into a second folder. These are stored with the rest of my papers (see below).

Paper Organization

I don’t have a filing cabinet or any other organization system for my papers as of yet. What I’ve done is corral all the papers (aside from recipes), notebooks, binders, loose leaf and all, into a large box. Everything is stored standing up, rather than stacked, so when I need to find a particular folder, notebook, or paper, I can easily locate it.

Having everything in one place is already making my life easier. No more random piles of paper everywhere! No more hunting through every room trying to remember where I’ve stored that one thing.

I hope you found this post helpful and that it motivates you to declutter your own papers. Have you done the KonMari Method? What was your experience with the paper category? Leave a comment below!

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