Minimalism: Papers in Progress – Part 7

In my last Minimalism: Papers In Progress – Part 6, I spent a couple weeks in October going through files, coming in one (1) folder short of finishing my file cabinet. In November, I decided to spend time before and after Thanksgiving going through a cooler bag filled with photos and paper mementos. This was simply because I was not in the mood to spend hours logging receipts of major purchases that I wanted to keep documented.

This cooler bag was completely filled to the point I could not fully close the zippered top. I wish I had weighed it before I started, but can confidently say it was likely ~35lbs worth of photos and papers. It included things from since I was a baby to now, so literally covering several decades of my entire life! The papers in this bag were all sentimental ranging from schoolwork, poems I’ve written, playbills, ticket stubs, day planners, printed itineraries, receipts, boarding pass stubs and postcards from past trips. I had kept all these things in anticipation of creating scrapbooks. Something that I love to do but haven’t made time for in ~15+ years.

The KonMari method says to save photos, which fall into the sentimental category, for the very end of the sorting process. I decided to proceed with it out of order because I knew I had a ton of paper included with the photos, several of which I thought would be fairly easy to quickly sort through. I anticipated that I would likely spend several hours over a couple weeks reminiscing through old photos as I worked my way through the pile and made sure I was prepared to do that. However, I did go into this telling myself that I would not allow myself to dwell too long on anything either because this was intended to be a simple “first pass” to eliminate some paper I knew I no longer wanted to keep that was mixed in with the photos. The truly sentimental paperwork would be set aside for when I actually came to the sentimental category to be sorted through properly.

Since I planned to send handmade ornaments for Christmas, I decided to take advantage of this opportunity to include pictures as part of my holiday greeting since I was already going through them. I thought this would be a wonderfully meaningful gift that I could give this year that I hoped my loved ones would appreciate.

Surprisingly, it was relatively easy to go through thousands of pictures to use for Christmas greetings. I had such a great time reminiscing as I flipped through each photo, and also quickly sorting any papers into 2 piles – 1) trash and 2) save for later to review when I get to the sentimental category.

By the time I was done, I had 3 bags of trash and a significant pile of photos that was set aside for Christmas. I was very pleased with reducing the volume of the cooler bag by well over half, which would make going through the sentimental category that much easier down the road!