National Organize Your Files Week — April 15-21, 2013
Organizers offering advice
Many professional organizers are taking advantage of this week to offer their services for dealing with our piles of paper and also nowadays digital files.
Their websites have tips on how to go about this:
http://www.clutterdietblog.com/2009/04/national-organize-your-files-week-yippee.htm.
http://www.clutterdietblog.com/#
http://www.organizationdirect.com/paper-clutter-2/national-organize-files-week/
“ART” for sorting
To organize papers before filing, there’s the “ART” system — “action, reference, trash.” Only “reference” items are to be filed.
“Paper acquires tenure”
DMC member Kelvin says, “Paper acquires tenure.” So true. The longer you hang on to papers, documents, clippings, etc., the harder it is to toss them out.
Should this week for organizing our files be earlier in the year?
“Filing as Art Form”
“I get high putting things in their proper folders — filing has become my most creative means of expression,” says Ralph Keyes in his encouraging article about filing: http://www.ralphkeyes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/AR-Filing.pdf
Impress lady friends?
A dull man’s alternative to the romantic cliche, “Would you like to come up to see my etchings?”: “Would you like to come up to see my filing system?”
Another way a dull man might deal with this etching matter was depicted a cartoon by James Thurber, “You wait here and I’ll bring the etchings down.” We had a link to The New Yorker’s Cartoon Bank a while back but now the link does not work. Does anyone reading this know where a copy of that cartoon can be ordered?:
