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Purging Paperwork & Tweaking Our Command Center Closet

#SparkingJoy copy

Good morning!

I’m pretty excited about today’s topic! Purging Paperwork!! If you have been following along for the past four Sundays, then you know that I am part of a group of fabulous bloggers who are gradually working their way through their homes {purging and organizing}; following the Marie Kondo Method as outlined in her book “the life-changing magic of tidying up”.

Sparking Joy My Journey in Tidying Up at thehappyhousie

I’ve been reading through this book and following along with Marie’s suggested methods for getting organized; once and for all. I’m thrilled to be in cahoots with these bloggers on this #SparkingJoy journey:

A Journey to Sparking Joy:

Anderson & Grant
Making it in the Mountains
DIY Passion
Dwelling in Happiness
Zevy Joy
Cupcakes & Crinoline
Lost in the Found
The Happy Housie

In week one I shared my first big step in this journey. Tackling my clothing. I wrote about tips for purging your closet as well as an idea for what to do with all that clothing you purge: how to host a clothing exchange!

During week two I talked about purging and de-cluttering my Accessories and Make-up. During the third week I talked about my difficulties with purging my books.

But this week I had no trouble at all!

As I mentioned, this week’s focus was on purging paperwork. I LOVED IT!.

Because of being so busy over the past few months with renovating the other house, we had gotten quite behind on tackling our paperwork. But it felt incredible to finally get caught up on it.

Here is the method I followed

  1. Lay out all your accumulated paperwork on a surface (such as a table or countertop). I put mine all into a big pile.
  2. Designate three other areas on your surface for sorting, and keep a recycling bin nearby.
  3. Go through your paperwork on place it into one of the following areas:
    1. File (after you are done sorting you need to immediately file all the paperwork that requires saving).
    2. Deal With (things that you need to ACT upon soon)
    3. Garbage/Recycle/Shred – anything with personal information on it should be shredded or ripped up; while any other random papers can be recycled.
    4. Feel the FREEDOM! Paperwork is so fun to shred and recycle and deal with. It’s like an invisible weight is lifted off you… enjoy it!

Once all our paperwork was purged and organized, I figured it was the perfect time to make a few tweaks to our Command Center Closet

Get totally organized with a DIY Command Center in your home like this command center closet at thehappyhousie-2This is such a tricky space to photograph because, well, it is literally a closet. It should have been a coat closet near our front door, but since only guests enter through that door and we have a set of hooks on our board and batten for guests to hang their coats on, we really didn’t need the closet. I first wrote about this space and how we transformed it into a Command Central Station here.

The perfect thing about this space is that it sits right between all the main rooms in our house. It is right on the way to the kitchen, so it makes the perfect drop zone for all of our mail and daily paperwork. It is also a great charging zone for our phones and devices, and the perfect spot to house our home phone and calendar.

Get-totally-organized-with-a-DIY-Command-Center-in-your-home-like-this-command-center-closet-at-thehappyhousie-7

You can see that we have designated wall bins within this space. We use the top one for items that need to get filed, though my husband is usually pretty good about filing things right away (the pretty chalk-painted filing cabinet is under the counter in this closet). The next bin: ACT, is fairly self-explanatory. It is where we put paperwork that we need to deal with SOON. And the final bin: STORE – is where I put items that we just need to hold onto for a few days until we are done with them (e.g. children’s homework for the week; permission forms we need to send in; a Parks & Rec guide that we want to hang onto for reference etc.).

Get-totally-organized-with-a-DIY-Command-Center-in-your-home-like-this-command-center-closet-at-thehappyhousie-4

On the side wall we have a magnetic board and two clipboards {I covered these in some wrapping paper to make them pretty and matchy}. I use them to clip up important things or cute pictures from friends or free passes to activities etc…

Get-organized-with-a-DIY-Command-Center-in-your-home-like-this-command-center-closet-at-thehappyhousie-6

On the other side we have a storage unit that I picked up from Home Sense – on the bottom shelf we store pens etc. On the middle shelf we store sunglasses and charge cords. And on the top shelf we store our BBQ (out of the reach of little hands!). Beside that we have two small hanging files – one is designated for gift certificates and important receipts. The other is for mail. When mail first arrives I put it there if I haven’t had a chance to read it yet – just to keep it off the counters.

Get totally organized with a DIY Command Center in your home like this command center closet at thehappyhousie-9

The light fixture is great in the evenings if I am doing some organizing or planning or working on my calendar. We actually took a regular old hard-wired style light fixture and turned it into a plug-in fixture as we didn’t have the wiring for a light in this space.

Get-totally-organized-with-a-DIY-Command-Center-in-your-home-like-this-command-center-closet-at-thehappyhousie-3

On the countertop we have a magazine file for holding important reference books like the phone book etc. We also have a little pull-out drawer unit for storing office supplies (as this is our only home office). I have used a filing unit to hold our devices as well- it keeps them off the countertop while they charge. I had another little piece as a charging unit before but it become a little difficult to use… so I switched to this simple system instead.

Well, with the tweaks I’ve made to our Command Center this year I think we will definitely be able to keep our paperwork organized and tame the dragon.

Except, of course, for all the Kid’s Schoolwork that comes in… on a DAILY. BASIS.

I’m doing some pin-research on how to tackle that problem and I’ll be back really soon with some ideas for you!

 

Inspired to create your own Command Center??

This is awesome! Pin it to remember it!

Get yourself totally organized with a DIY Command Center at thehappyhousie.com

Do you want some more details about this Command Center?? Visit my original post on it to see more…

Command Central Station Creating a Command Center in a Closet at The Happy Housie-24

Or check out these 20 Fabulous Command Centers that I gathered together while I was originally planning ours…

20 Fabulous Command Centers to Get Your Life Completely Organized at The Happy Housie

 

A little more inspiration

Ready to see how my fellow #sparkingjoy bloggers made out with tackling their paperwork purge this week? 

Have you been doing any purging and organizing this week? What area are you tackling??

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I may link up at some of these fabulous places below, for more info check out housie parties: Monday Funday , Inspiration Monday, Nifty Thrifty Tuesday, Project Inspire{d} , Inspire Me Tuesday, The Scoop, Hit Me With Your Best Shot, Wow Me Wednesday, Whimsy Wednesday , From Dream to Reality, The Inspiration Exchange, Wow Us Wednesday, Live Laugh Rowe Live Laugh Linky, Thursdays Are Your Days, Inspire Me Please, Catch as Catch Can, Fabulously Creative Friday, Party Junk, Pinworthy Projects , Link Party Palooza,, Weekend Bloggy Reading, Strut Your Stuff Saturday, Spotlight Saturday, Suburbs Mama , That DIY Party

 

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10 Comments

  1. What a beautiful Space you have created Krista!! & turquoise is my favorite color so even more in love with it…..! Am looking forward to seeing how you declutter your kitchen, always looking for new ideas so many thanks for all you do.

    1. Thanks Kim – turquoise (and aqua and mint and teal…) are my favourites colours by far! I have another little organizational challenge area to share tomorrow, but I will have to share my kitchen organization soon. It is an area I had to tackle after the renovation as losing all our upper cabinets forced me to rethink my storage solutions!

  2. LOVE this command centre Krista! SUCH a brilliant way to keep everything in it’s place! And great tips for sorting and getting organized! Doesn’t it feel great?!

    1. Totally Kristi! So glad to be gradually working my way through things, but I feel like we still have miles to go with the garage and basement and… oh well!

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