Every Monday I post Real Life Minimalists, a profile of one of my readers in their own words. If you’d like to participate, click here for details.
Today we hear from Maria, who shares a powerful and inspirational perspective on decluttering the excess paperwork in our lives.
Maria writes:
My minimalist blind spot: paper.
My mother passed on in 2009 and my father followed this summer. Decades of more (or less) organized paper archives were left behind: phone bills, bank statements, legal and medical papers, clippings from magazines, articles cut out from newspapers, books, notebooks, travel catalogs, travel memorabilia, magazines, and recipes. Hundreds of photos and negatives those were loose or enveloped in shoe boxes. In addition to the weeks it took to go through it all, it was also so very depressing: to learn true details of events that you had been told otherwise or to read the gory details of your parent’s cancer history. It was mostly a sad archive. One cannot help wondering why you would archive the sad moments of your life so carefully. Why not throw out it all when you can? Then the wannabe life archives made me sad: all those recipes and travel locations I know my parents never tried or visited. Why not? Should I have known?
After going through my parents’ papers I dug into my own archives. I quickly realized that I had diaries, clippings, articles, recipes, piles of business cards from past jobs, double or triple photo sets, negatives, tax archives, dream/vision boards, all Christmas greetings I’ve ever received, letters, cards, stamps, all kid’s art from school, Mother’s Day cards and kids’ birthday greetings. All this neatly boxed or in binders in our walk-in closet, desk drawers, kids’ rooms, bookshelves – just everywhere.
There – I had done exactly as my dear parents: archived my real life and wannabe life. After the total embarrassment came determination. It dawned to me that I want my kids to be free from any hidden or visible paper burdens from the past generations. It ends here. I’m cleaning this paper junk out of our lives!
Gone is now that fits into 10 standard moving boxes (volume total 690 liters = 170 dry gallons). While some paper is handled once and for all, other papers need maybe four times before I can finally let go. I have now accepted this and am being both gentle and firm with myself. I feel like the house has more air, the air is fresher and the light shining in from the windows is brighter. It was a heavy load hidden in all those boxes and binders. I am rising like a Phoenix bird from the burned paper piles into freedom!
So my dear minimalist friends: what have you done lately with any paper that enters your home? Archived it? Why? Dig deeper and see what paper you tend to archive. See it all through a stranger’s eyes: when finding it, will it make you happy, sad or wonder why on Earth this paper was saved? Does it reveal a Fantasy-me identity? Does it carry a clear illusion around it that this item may be worth a lot of money just because it is very old?
Simply and bravely toss all paper you can because our generation will be the first to leave behind both paper and electronic personal archives. Use whatever motivation trick you know to get rid of the piled paper and stop the paper flow into your home: stop buying magazines and printing stuff and start to use all e-services you possibly can for banking, healthcare, business catalogs – you know what it is! Let go and trust that you will be fine without all that paper. Enjoy walks in the forest and hug trees knowing that the paper you never need anymore may live on in that tree.
{If you’d like to learn more about minimalist living, please consider reading my book, The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide, or subscribing to my RSS feed.}
Love the ‘knowing that the paper you never need anymore may live on in that tree.’ Thank you for your post. My parent will leave me with the same when they’ll die. And i’ve spoken with them about it, but they don’t want to clean the junk. It makes me sad, to know what keeps me bussy after they die. Things instead of memories.
things instead of memories… << this touched a nerve in me.. thanks for reminding that it's better to have memories than material things…
Paper can be overwhelming, especially if it is not yours! Like Maria, after the difficult exercise of going through my sister’s documents, I have embraced the no-paper philosophy. She doesn’t need any of these papers anymore, so why should it be different for me with mines?
I have a soft spot for Christmas cards though, and I was thinking of doing a sort of “ceremony” reading all of them one by one for the last time, recalling the sender and sending good vibes to them, before tossing the card into a big joyful fire!
Loved the save trees message too.
I’m going through my stuff really slowly too, and yes, sometimes it takes at least four times before I am able to let go… but at least I’m ready to let go finally then. I’d hate to have somebody go through my stuff with me and force me to decide in one day, like in the Hoarder series.
I agreed with most of what you said. I am trying to go through my paper work so my kids won’t have to. But as far as those ‘sad’ medical reports about cancer they were wise to keep them. I have had cancer twice and I have kept every surgery report and lab report. Why, because I can’t tell you how many times the doctors haven’t had a copy of those reports. When you get medical treatment many times reports aren’t shared. I can have the report included in my file at that doctor’s office because I have the paper copy. Paperless medical records are great as long as everything gets put in your records. Sounds to me like your parents were pro-active with there health making sure they could talk to their docs and have the medical reports readily available. Good for them.
Now back to throwing out all the rest of the stuff:)
Quite right – I have MS and therefore spend a lot of time in hospital, and even though I try to go the same hospital for everything lots of stuff is lost between departments, even in this digitalized day and age…
Thank you for your story, Maria. Just this weekend I cleared out about 90% of my “wannabe” papers; I found them depressing.
Way to go Alix!
Thanks Maria – loved this post.I saw the light re most paper a few years ago, mainly because of watching a friend who was disappearing under hers and refusing/unable to sort it out. Last year I took the big step of destroying the journals I’d kept for about 20 years. They chronicled unhappy times in my life and I suddenly wondered why I’d want to relive that – and I wouldn’t have wanted my sisters to read them after my death, either. I can echo your sense of lightness and release – and I symbolically put some of the shredded paper into the compost heap,so it would contribute to new growth, as those hard times have contributed to mine.
My important paper file contains, both my birth and my marriage certificates my Social Security card and my passport.
In my wallet you will find my driver’s license, military dependent I D and Medicare Card.
Along with a charge card an ATM card.
That is really all I need.
Our children ( and lawyer ) have copies of our wills, investments and life insurance policies.
I went through my photo “bins”( 4 XL size ) this past summer, got rid of duplicates,blurry photos or pics of people no longer part of our lives . I need to comb through the 50% that made the cut and decide to scan them and then toss them.
When my in laws died 5 years ago I bagged 8 industrial size plastic bags, gave the bags to my bro in law and I can only imagine what he went through sorting through them.
Thanks for sharing your story.
I’ve been there, too, Maria, in the cleaning out of relatives’ paper hoards. I applaud you (and the other commenters) for not bequeathing your children with the same task, but instead facing up to your habits and changing them as needed.
Thanks for sharing this Maria. I purge my papers every once in a while but could stand to be more ruthless. I did purge my recipe drawer of all the recipe clippings I knew I’d never, in a million years, make! Thanks for the encouragement!! – Karen
Lovely post! TO MISS MINIMALIST: I MISS YOU!! I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR AN UPDATE ON PLUMBLOSSOM. HOW ARE YOU HANDLING A CHILD AND MINIMALISM? I KNOW SOMEONE ONCE SAID THEY DIDN’T WANT THIS TO TURN INTO A “MOMMY BLOG” AND YOU TOOK THAT TO HEART, BUT OTHERS OF US WOULD REALLY LOVE TO HEAR MORE ABOUT HOW YOU ARE NAVIGATING LIFE NOW WITH YOUR YOUNG AND GROWING FAMILY. I KNOW I WOULD! I THINK ABOUT YOU OFTEN, AND WONDER WHAT THE DAY-TO-DAY IS LIKE. THANKS!
Me too! I don’t have kids and would love to get an update on Plumblossom!
I don’t have kids and enjoy updates on Plumblossom as well! We saw Francine’s flat when she first moved in but would love to see if again now that it’s furnished and she has a child. Where to store all the toys and clothes?
Loved this post Maria! I agree with Susan also! My med school daughter cringes over the fact that because of privacy laws and very incompatible systems kept by individual docs and hospitals, you had better keep your own med records for now. Sad, but true. I also learned about journaling the hard way! My kids found my high school diaries in my parents basement and painfully read my most embarrassing moments before the extended family at dinner one night. I think I had made up many of the sexy entries, and my kids weren’t trying to be mean, just thought the entries were hilarious. My parents were shocked, and I quit my adult journaling immediately!hoping never to hear my thoughts read back to me again! It’s funny now, but totally embarrassing! Attorneys are right…never put it in writing unless younwant to see it again! When my parents died, I was the first to the basement…to throw out my old stuff as well as theirs
May it’s due to paranoia or I was a minimalist in the making, but as a young girl and teen, I never kept diaries for fear of someone else reading them :)
Since the modern world is now so digital, I usually know that I can access what I need without keeping a paper copy.
I’m also trying hard not to pick up ‘free’ publications that are found in piles in many locations and bring them home with me. I can usually find what I need online or I can go to a coffee shop, where I can read publications and then leave that copy for the next person.
You are right, let’s think about the trees before consuming frivolous items like magazines and other publications!
but it is a hard one paper! Lots of ‘What if..?’ I laughed when you said you realised you were doing the same as your parents – well done for seeing it, and for doing something about it. Must keep going.
I went out with 3 also retired friends. All have huge houses with one or two people in them. All that energy to heat and cool all that space. Then I read your column, glad that the future is tiny.
I’m getting ready to go through what you just went through. My parents are both in their 90’s
They are in good shape for their age but slowing way down and it’s only going to be a matter of time.
We are moving them from their 3000 square foot home into an assisted living center in the spring. When that happens we’ll have to tackle that large house full of 50 or 60 years worth of “Stuff”
I happen to know that my mom has carefully archived and preserved most of my grand parents “Stuff” from when they passed away in the late 80’s Now my parents stuff is stacked on top of their parents stuff.
When will it all end?
Some of it is valuable of course and there are some very sentimental items but the vast majority of it is flotsam and jetsom.
I have made the decision to not do this to my kids. I’m making a concerted effort to only keep the valuable and important things.
When I say that I mean I’m being very rigorous with myself about whats valuable and whats important to me. Most of is on it’s way out!
Wish me luck!
cary
I have concerns about going completely digital, especially with family photos. I have a photo of my great grandparents that I treasure. That photo event was a rare occasion, so it got passed down to me. Now we take thousands of digital photos, but will they last for our grandchildren? Technology changes at a rapid pace. The memorable shot is buried among thousands – will they be accessible in ten years, let alone 100 years? What happens when the laptop is stolen? Plus will your Facebook or laptop password be forever lost when you die? How will your children access the important family memory records if it’s all digital?
Not saying that keeping every family photo, recipe or travel photo is necessary, and nothing lasts forever but sometimes a hard copy will remain when a digital record won’t.
“…start to use all e-services you possibly can.” Websites crash and systems crash so although I do my banking, etc., online, I still prefer a hardcopy.
Please don’t think that digitizing means loss of your stuff. These days nearly everything can be automatically backed up to and retrieved from the “cloud” – think of it as your private file cabinet in the sky (usually for free). Also you can create your own photo albums from digital files, and print them into nice books, much like the popular scrapbook hobbies. Take a few minutes to search online to find out more about how to do this. Digitizing is a very important component of the minimalist life, and will some day save even more trees. I think this is all quite fascinating.
I don’t have a computer, nor a camera, nor an iphone or any of those who have “clouds”, nor an i whatever for music, nor a tv.
I do my banking using my computer at work; my memory is excellent and I remember events and travel so no need for a camera (and if I did have one, as a senior I wouldn’t remember who the people are in the photos anyway :); have cell phone that costs $100 per year and no one has the phone number (for emergencies only); no i for music (it sounds horribly tinny anyway); and I find tv tedious, boring and most shows stupid.
Many call me a luddite (untrue, I have the cell phone and voice messaging on home phone) but I prefer a Technology Minimalist :)
Just curious, do you listen to music? If so, how?
I have a portable stereo that plays cds. I listen mostly to classical music at home, at work and in my car.
Thank You for your post! Interesting that I’m not the only one accused of being a luddite! I do fine with my laptop, my voice/text cell phone, and a radio/cd player. My granddaughter is the “organizer.” I haven’t let her touch my closet of paperwork… yet…
My co-worker keeps telling me “You’re going to be left behind!!” if I don’t continually consume all the electronics he has. I responded “You can only be left behind if you’re trying to keep up; I’m not trying to keep up!”
Besides, there are 6 Billion people on this planet and only about 20% have electricity, so, Martha, you and I fit within the majority :)
I recently got rid of two filing cabinets worth of paper junk! Old credit card statements, tax returns from the 70’s and 80’s, clippings, magazine articles, and on and on. I was tired of having the cabinets take up precious space in my tiny dining area. I went through everything and took many full paper grocery bags to a local shredding business on free shred day. I bought a small plastic file bin, large enough to hold about 8 file folders but small enough to fit on the shelf in my clothes closet. I was amazed to discover that the essential documents that I really needed to keep fit in that box with room to spare.
I donated the empty filing cabinets and the desk they were next to and gave away my old laptop computer and printer. I have a Kindle that I use for web browsing and email, and if I need to print anything I do it at work on my desktop. It’s so freeing and now I have room in my dining area for a new hutch to store my pots and pans and baking supplies so I can finally declutter my kitchen cabinets, which is another story…..
A home cloud (NAS) networked attached storage combined with an automatic Glacier-style offsite backup is a great tool that we use. Our mobile devices automatically get synced to the NAS, too. All important original must have documents are in a fire safe.
A second onsite digital backup also is taken and fire proofed.
Old family photos are being consolidated into one single box/album for keepsakes but is otherwise digitized so it can be shared and enjoyed more readily.
I have been on a minimalist path for the past few years. Recently I too have freed up physical space by shredding and recycling papers– the sentimental kind– personal journals and correspondence. It feels great to have that space! I have also consolidated digital photos onto my laptop, all filed by year, over 15,000 of them. Backed up. Many were scanned from the original photos collected through the years and stored in albums which took up a lot of space. These albums I have passed on to my children, which I feel guilty about because now they are stuck storing them. That got me thinking about the sheer number of my digital photo files. Who will really ever look at them? Just because it’s so easy to snap a photo, is it necessary? Why was I compelled to take over 400 iphone photos on a recent two week vacation? It’s so excessive. It’s so easy to snap away, so difficult to delete them! Minimalist inconsistency!
I recently re-read all the letters I have got from family and friends over the years, had a great laugh, a little cry and then gave them all back to the people who sent them (ok, I kept my favourite from each person!). After, these letters contain THEIR lives, not mine.
I have run a business, and I have to keep the paperwork because I worked with insurance companies. To me, the single file box is less tedious than scanning it all, and I can ditch it once the 7 year mark for taxes is up.
What I didn’t realize for personal taxes until reading about it from Flylady is that all you need for tax records is a check register. If you take the time to record your transactions, or at least the ones you need for tax purposes, then it is a legally acceptable document, and you do not need to carry or record hoards of bank statements, bills, or donation receipts — paper or digital. I have not done this yet as my spouse pays most of the bills so I would have to get him on board, but taking just a few seconds to record your purchases, donations, and income would save a lot of headaches. I had a random adoption expense audit, and it was stressful to have to pull out all of the receipts, which by that time were faded and barely readable. It would have been so much easier to hand over a check register the size of a checkbook and say it was all there. Plus, you only need to keep 7, and they could stay in the tax file.
In addition, I think that having to physically record purchases and expenses with ink would make the process much more mindful. If it’s worth hassling making an entry in the register, then maybe it is worth buying, but if putting it into a register is too much hassle, then maybe it is not a worthy purchase. They also have wallet sized registers for those who think the check size is too cumbersome.
Thanks for this, Maria. For some reason, your post hit me more than many earlier ones. A year ago, I went through big bags of letters (back in my twenties, my friends and I wrote longhand ones, sometimes 10 pages. Unthinkable now. And missed – both the time (!) and the tactile/visual sense). No way could I read all of them, but I skimmed a lot, and saved one or two from each, just to see their handwriting.
Also skimmed some diaries. Yikes! Bad, self-absorbed writing with tiny gems tucked in. A long record of untreated depression/anxiety, fretting about people I can’t even remember. It must have helped at the time, but I needed to get it out of the house and my brain! So right before my birthday, I had a ceremonial backyard burn at night in the snow. Letters from old boyfriends, dear friends, relatives, journals. Cried and let it go. Took one photo. The next morning my husband had a stroke – talk about a wake up call. Live now.
The hardest thing for me is to take the time to go through all this paper and stuff. Like now that I realize how oppressive it is, I don’t want to spend any more mental energy (and sometimes anguish) or time to decide about every little damn paper or object in my house. Feels like I’ll never get through it before I die. And I don’t even have a big house, and I’ve gotten rid of so much already. I get stuck on thinking I need to do this before I can move on, but that’s not realistic either. And now my parents are giving me so much as they move into a retirement center. I go through it in the parked car – will not bring anything into my house even for sorting. Kept very little – old things from Norway that have been passed down, etc. But it’s ENDLESS.
Ah well. I forge on. Thanks for listening!
Hi Maria,
Your post is very inspiring and touching, coz I am the paper person, it’s an eye opener… Immediately after reading your post before going to sleep, I slash my wallet and several drawers and fulfiled almost half rubbish bin with unused paper. But now I still stuck on my fave books, some knick knacks remembering me of loving family members/friends. However, now I do have acquired a new perspective on paper. Thank you Maria. Wishing you all the very best.
I gave more old magazines and DVD’s to the library. A friend was telling me how cluttered her house was with art supplies. I told her my house wasn’t cluttered because I gave away what I thought I’d never use. There is no prize for having the most stuff.
Still giving away 1 or 2 bags of stuff every week and recycling a lot. Hoarding runs in the family but luckily it missed me. I keep shredding old bank statements, especially since I have copies of the checks. My mom asked again about her books. I said they were mildewed and smelled bad and we threw them out. 70 boxes of them. I pick up used paperbacks when I find ones I think she will like.
I wish everyone had a warm, safe place to eat and sleep and everyone had plenty of food in the coming years. We have to learn to be resourceful and.ive with much less.
I am trying to reduce, reuse, recycle, compost, and generally make the smallest footprint I can. When I was little we ate a lot of fruit and vegetables and very little red meat. I raised my own children the same way and I see my grandchildren being raised the same way. We all need a little less so everyone can have something.