Progress through Confetti

Observation of the week: decluttering is so much easier with a good paper shredder close at hand.

Now that I'm to the last bit of visible clutter in my room (my bathroom's another story that'll have to be dealt with later), I find myself procrastinating on finishing it. It's my perfectionism kicking in, or so FlyLady tells me. I don't want to finish something because it's not done perfectly. I've been a lot better at recognizing that since I admitted it to myself sometime last year, though actually finishing something is still a lot harder for me than starting something.

But back to procrastination and paper shredders. One thing that gives me the perfect procrastination excuse is the shredding pile. I have some perfectly normal junk mail in there, but among the more ridiculous things I had earlier in this pile was countless credit card offers unopened and dating back to before I started college. Considering I'm well established as a graduate, I think it's time to get rid of them. However, the household paper shredder is super cheap, only shreds five pages at a time, and its bin fills up far too quickly. I spent a good few hours one weekend this past summer just going through and shredding the two-crates-full "to shred" pile. I found a lot more things to shred when I went through my craft supplies. Maybe my biggest source of mess wasn't the craft supplies after all.

Well, I've recognized for some time that I won't regularly go out to the family room and shred my junk mail, so I finally went out after work one day this week and bought Staples' Mailmate shredder. I haven't owned it a full week, and it's already well worth the money I spent on it. I don't even have to open the AmEx offers, and I can run the old backup CDs through without taking the extra time to scratch the label and/or cut the disc apart. Because of this, I haven't had paper and CD crap laying all over my desk this week. The only pain about the shredder is that the basket is small, so I have to empty it often. Hopefully emptying it won't happen so often once I get my papers and discs more under control.