Today on AnchoredScraps.com with an eye of looking ahead – we are looking at taking one Saturday between now and Labor Day to finally sit down and go through our personal papers needing de-cluttering.

You know those stacks of boxes/tubs/shopping tote bags that are full of receipts, mail order catalogs, and magazines that haven’t made it out of the stack yet to either be read or tossed ?  Yes, that stack.  —  I’m continuing to make room for my new desk that is arriving next week – so I’m mindful of making room and addressing those stacks!  —  The idea is to truly plan to go through them and make decisions.  Along the way you will come across (like I have today) items that had not gotten put away into their rightful places – the sense of satisfaction upon completion is worthy of a big sigh of contentment.

“Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”  – Henry James

If the idea of dedicating a full or partial Saturday does not work with your obligations – here is a suggested alternative approach: decide for one week (you pick the week) that each night you will use a timer for 30 minutes to tackle one of those boxes/stacks and that way knock it out a little each time.  The focus and making decisions is the mindset you want to be in when you sit down for those 30 minutes.

The reason I suggest to begin preparing for when we find ourselves in the blink of an eye  (dare I say it) – it will be September, school will have already been started back and rather than think, “Wow! I was going to go through all that stuff during the Summer and never got around to it” –  well, this way you will have!  The investment of getting rid of the paper clutter will pay dividends with smiles, and being able to find things, including for example stationery, and stamps for your letter writing!

“My folks always let me go to the movies every Saturday.  We were really motion-picture goers.” – John Wayne

Happy Saturday! Join me tomorrow when we wrap up the week with Sunday’s blog post here at AnchoredScraps.com.

Anchors Aweigh,  

Helen