flinging

I love paper….

Paper is my weakness. (Well, ONE of my weaknesses….chocolate, fabric, and pretty boxes being some of the others.)

I have finally learned how to walk PAST a stationery shop, or if not past, out with empty hands.

I LOVE paper. Pads, notebooks, pretty envelopes, calendars, greeting cards— well you get the idea.

I don’t love bills. I do love magazines, and newspapers, however. And scrapbooking paper. And organizers with pretty covers.

And the funny (sad funny, not funny ha-ha) thing is, I don’t USE them nearly as much as I should.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say I hoard them, but I am very reluctant to use these papers. It pains me to cut into a pretty scrapbook page, I am loathe to write on (and possibly run out of!) a cute note pad. I forget to mail out ‘snail mail’ greeting cards.

Therefore, the majority of my grocery lists are on the backs of envelopes, or the clean side of a piece of printing paper I scrounged from work when I thought of something that needed noting.

Yes, it IS the more ecologically sound way to do things. But if I am living off of randomly sized scraps of paper, why do I keep buying such cute little note pads?

file1

This is a result of LAST year’s attempt. I keep my papers here, next to my computer in the studio. All of the household files and all of Timmy’s stuff is in a file drawer in the den. And on the dining room table, and in the pile next to his monitor. The remainder of mine is sitting stacked, in both vertical and horizontal piles, somewhere.

So, lets get to FLINGING. Below, you will find links to a series of internet articles that should give you a bit of comfort and confidence that you can, indeed, throw out most of what you have saved.

What you will need to get flinging this time:

  • A shredder. Only shred things with personal info. No sense in burning out the motor.
  • A large paper grocery bag, for all the envelopes, junk mail and marketing inside your bills.
  • New file folders, unless yours are relatively clean and not all rough around the edges, with 5 or 6 crossed out categories already. Splurge, live a little. Buy some colored folders at Staples or Office Max, or go into Michaels Arts and Crafts—in their Dollar area right now they sell pretty file folders (about 4 in a pack)… If you don’t have them all tucked away, make your area a bit less—Forbidding? Uninspiring? Brighten things up.
  • A Sharpie, in a color that you like. (Not one of the almost dried out ones from the back of the junk drawer. Fling that one! Again, treat yourself right.)
  • If you don’t have a drawer, or filing cabinet already, buy something. It doesn’t need to be industrial sized, unless you truly need something that big. It can be a rectangular wicker basket, kept on a bookshelf, or a nice magazine holder, or a plastic tote. The choices are endless, and yours. Just make sure it fits where you want it and that it holds your file folders.

Next, gather as much as you can bear, and settle in somewhere with a flat surface, and an outlet. Turn on some music, or put on a movie you’ve seen before, plug in your shredder and start flinging!

EVERY piece of paper that goes into the shredder or the garbage bag counts.  Keep note of how quickly you surpass 27! When it becomes too much, walk away.

Come back later, fling another 27, or 27 and 27 and 27… as the pile on the table shrinks and the pile in the bag increases, you will probably feel compelled to keep going!

If you do use the backs of old paper as your notepaper of choice, that is fine, and laudable. BUT, it is not an excuse to stop flinging, or to just leave things as they are.

Gather those that are up to the job—(BLANK on the back), and cut/tear them in thirds along the fold lines. Staple 20 or so of the same size together to make note pads. Once the pile of note pads is over an inch tall, start flinging the rest. You KNOW you will receive more paper in the mail today. And tomorrow. And the next day.

Filing Systems…

Get rid of junk mail…

Retention of paper…

More retention of paper…

(Now, a caveat— If any of the links above indicate you NEED to own something THEY SELL in order to accomplish this Flinging task, be aware that is not my intention; I am not recommending any specific file organization purchase via these sites. They are simply the articles that seemed to have the breadth of answers to make Flinging a bit easier.)

One month in…

How is your 27 Thing Fling working for you? Are you looking at things differently? Do you find yourself flinging from a spot that we haven’t even started? (Or do you want to leave it solely to be able to count ‘later’? If so, fling it and add it to whatever place you are counting. 🙂 )Are you questioning your purchases?

By the way, this is NOT a ‘no shopping’ exercise. What it is is a ‘Do I NEED it’ exercise, ‘Is it worth working another 5 hours of my life away’ exercise, an ‘Am I buying it because it’s easier than looking for the old one’ exercise, and a ‘Where am I going to put it exercise’….  (Ok, officially exhausted. Haven’t exercised that much in forever!)

I have purchased (other than food, etc) a few pairs of pants, a nice stack of CD’s, some sweaters/tops in colors that I found worked well with my leaner, more organized closet (All from Goodwill. I just LOVE my Goodwill!!!)

And, some Christmas stuff on mega clearance that I KNEW I could use. (Like wrapping paper. Once I make it into the guest room, where the wrapping paper lives, I will be flinging some things there, and HOW could you turn down 90% off?)

Yes, faulty logic, and possibly how my house got to the state it is in. But, being that my Christmas things were just out….

Ah, see how easily we can delude ourselves? (Gotta watch those KNEW/HOW equations. But in this case, I feel confident.)

I bought a few house decorations too. My father was selling this tea set on his site and I couldn’t resist buying it. Its precious, isn’t it? And so me!

patches

So, we are all on the same page, right? This is not about denying yourself, but about trying to find yourself, amidst all the ‘stuff’.

The next category is: File cabinets. Yeah, this one should keep you busy for a while. And what perfect timing, as Tax Season is upon us.

Is your shredder up to the task? And by the way, you don’t get a pass simply because you keep your financial and paper life in something other than a filing cabinet. Any box, basket, drawer or pile otherwise unnamed counts here. But, I will give you a day or so to contemplate this next project.

Because I believe I promised a little deviation to the list.

Its computer clutter. It’s digital images. Let’s grab the bull by the horns, ok? (This is not about past behaviors. We will get to that. Photographs have their own category! We are going to establish new behaviors.)

Tomorrow is February 1. What needs to occur is this: (And for some of you, it’s so much a non-issue, you may not believe I am bothering.)

Get your cameras. All of them, phone too, if you use it as a camera.

FIRST. Have you uploaded all the images you took in ‘JAN 2010’? If not, do so. Create a folder with that date, put everything there. After you take whatever photos you may plan on taking today, Jan 31. (Happy birthday, Andrew!)

NEXT. LOOK at the images. Are there blurry, dark, or other obviously bad images there; images that are really meant for the recycle bin? Then FLING them. Right into the recycle bin.

THIRD. Rename them. I don’t know how to do so particularly in your program or your computer, so I will tell you this–Name all the images 2010-JAN_ Or JAN 2010_ or whatever suits you best. But get the date in there. (If they are all pictures of the cat, then possibly 2010- CAT….) What I am suggesting is ESTABLISH a naming system, and NAME every file in your JAN 2010 picture folder. But only the ones worth keeping.

NOW. Is there any image you would like to print? (If you do photo editing, then insert this step here.) Print them. Order prints. Today. Sign up for Kodak Gallery, or Shutterfly, or Snapfish or load them back onto a card and take them to Target or to wherever, but get them PRINTED. After all, WHY did you take the picture in the first place?

LASTLY.  Burn a CD. Back up in some fashion. Create a second set of these images. Grab a fine point sharpie, LABEL the CD in the center, 2010-JAN, photos. 1 of … . Put the CD into a jewel case, and create a spot to store it. Create offsite storage online for additional backup protection. Use the online gallery at Kodak (about $20 a year IF you don’t order photos from them) or whichever place floats your boat… (Smugmug is my choice. REFERRAL LINK GETS YOU a DISCOUNT when you sign up USING THIS LINK ONLY)

Because it is only January, it’s a DOABLE number of photos. Most people take very few images in January. But we are establishing something that is going to be important later in the flinging.

But before I do that, I am heading outside with my camera to take pictures of the snow!!! Looks like a foot or so!

Going out strong…

As of last night, I had flung 342 items. Not 27 a day. But at least 27 each day I worked at flinging. How are your numbers?

For this last week of January, we will finish off the kitchen flinging.

8.  Refrigerator/freezer

9.  Kitchen cabinets/pantry (Moved from way down on the list, since we are in the kitchen)

You CAN fling food… Just, no food fights, ok? Systematically, shelf by shelf. Look at the items in your fridge. Do you have four opened bottles of one salad dressing? Soy sauce packets, dying green peppers in ziplock baggies, left-overs left over from last year?

If all 4 bottles of dressing are almost full, gather them together at least, and erase them from your mental grocery list! And, I would suggest adding salad to your menu for the next week or so! (My mental grocery list forces me to buy spaghetti sauce repeatedly.)

When you get to the freezer, take a pad and pencil. Were you aware you had that many frozen pork chops?

Can you go through the pantry as well, and create a menu to get you through the first few weeks of February without having to do a major shop?

This isn’t about depleting your stockpiles or anything along those lines. To those of you who have a clue, and a handle on this, realize some of us are clueless!

Do you shop, and then wonder what on earth you are going to cook for dinner because there is no food in the house??

One of my failings is I want for dinner to be a meal. Not just dinner. So, I am perfectly capable of hosting a meal for 6 –12-20 people. When it comes down to having dinner on the table? Again? I mean, didn’t I just make dinner last night?

You should be finished flinging the bathrooms, the bedroom and the kitchen by Sunday. Note, I did only the master bedroom. Tackle EACH bedroom as a separate entity, following the flinging rules above.(Or don’t, no one is checking on you.) Doesn’t need to be done by Sunday. There will be a LOT of year left by the time we finish one complete round!

Monday, February 1 we are making a small deviation in the list. (More to come in Sunday’s blog.)

And, since I am posting this on Tuesday, and will not be posting again this week, let me say “Happy Birthday, Daddy,” one day early!  You can go to Country Joe’s to wish him a happy 65 yourself. (Daddy is probably not following this flinging blog. He is so NOT a flinger.)2009 10 NYC-295 8x10 

Aunt Gael, Daddy, and me, Oct 2009