Decluttering my filing cabinet has been on my to do list for at least the last five years.

It was so badly stuffed beyond its capacity, I could barely wedge any new papers into it.

We won’t talk about the paper cuts. Or the steel cuts.

I was thinking it might be easier to buy another cabinet…

But with my recent enforced idleness, I read Antony Johnstone’s The Organised Writer. And made a start on the filing cabinet.

It took me three whole days to go through the filing cabinet and sort all those records out.

Channelling David Allen’s Getting Things Done, I even took out my label maker and made labels for each file.

(There’s something so satisfying about labels).

And now that I’ve cleared it out, I have seven years of records in the cabinet and fifteen years ready to shred.

The filing cabinet is now so roomy you can hear the files richocheting around the drawers.

Johnston’s claim that organised filing system frees up your mind from other worries may be true. And as Allen says, nice uniform file labels do make it quicker and easier find what you’re after.

Of course I had to order some new files to replace the crappy old ones, so there’s still more to do.

And as I’ve used different files over time, the labels are not all in the same place, which annoys me a bit too so hopefully there’s enough files to remedy that.

Coincidentally, they’re all pure saturated colours too!

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

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