#not that long ago i know i was dealing with angst online. and that just. permeates everything. for *months*

[d8tl55c]

me: waiting for shoe(s) to drop

Personified Alan Becker YouTube Icon: oh... buddy...

[sold2vlaykz]

I love you more than you do.

(Yandere Millionare E/Ex X FEM! reader!)

Prompt: Your older E/Ex bf can not get over you, has not and tonight he’s come back to claim you as his!)

Warning!! Mild angst, stalking, CNC kiss, towel nudity mentioned, loser reader!, word pretty mentioned, older male yandere.

It was late, you usually did things like this. Stayed up all night despite having school/work tomorrow, you’d spend hours on social media, discord, just because you had nothing better to do with your life.

Your relationship with your family was backwards, sometimes they loved you next they did not.

He hated seeing you sad, the tears rolling down your face as they belittled you. Belittled his sweet little girl.

He wanted to kill them, rip their throats out.

But he couldn’t because he knew it’d hurt you, despite the luxury of a life he could’ve given you after he knew that your pure heart wouldn’t have accepted it.

“I fucking hate this shit.”

You cursed at yourself, arguing with some nobody online while he watched you from your window a gift in hand.

Of course he could’ve watched you from the cameras but it was never better than the real thing.

Of course he’d deal with who you were arguing with later, whoever it was, was soon to be dead on a platter.

But tonight was all about you.

Tonight was the night, the night you’d see him.

You stood up, closing your phone before rubbing your temples and heading to the bathroom. He stood there for a second, waiting maybe a minute or five before he heard the shower water begin to run.

He climbed up the rails into your bedroom window , being quick to hide himself away in a closet.

Your family was away, everyone had something better to do than to be in the house with you.

The smell of you surrounded the room, he’s ashamed to say but it made him horny. He’s only ever been this close to put the cameras in or steal things.

Minutes flew by and there you were. Standing in all your glory in a towel.

Before you dropped it he stepped out, your eyes went wide in surprise as a scream left your lips. It wasn’t long before he covered your mouth with his gloved hand.

He pressed his gun to your back, a smile crept to his face as you trembled.

“Another word and I’ll blow your shit straight off.”

He was lying through his teeth, he couldn’t kill you. God he’d rather kill himself but hey you didn’t know that.

You nodded quickly, his hand slowly moving away from you.

He picked you up and placed you on your bed, careful not to drop the towel. His hands traced your face, then your towel slowly unraveling it.

He didn’t want to fuck you, well not without your consent at least.

You began to cry, whimpers leaving your lips thinking that your dignity was about to be ripped away.

“No, shh. I’m not gonna’ do anything. Just wanna’ feel you.”

His voice was deep, rolled of the tongue so effortlessly.

His hands went down to your stomach, squeezing the skin just to get a feel, cupping your breast gentle, rubbing your thighs. With each move a whimper left his lips, as if he was getting off on just rubbing you.

“Who are you?”

Your voice was cracked and shaky, almost a whisper despite no one being home.

“I’m your husband.”

He spoke blankly, your eyes widened at the golden ring on his finger. You were confused, maybe this was all just a bad dream. None of it made sense.

Well at least not to you, to him you were married. He got your parent’s signature on a contract not too long ago, they were all drunk after a party and stupidly signed a paper not knowing what it was.

Now you were his, all nude and pretty. Sitting there just for him.

He opened your laptop, immediately faced with the discord screening.

He grabbed your hand before pulling you softly towards him, sitting in a chair while pushing you into his lap.

“Won’t be needing this anymore”

You watched him factory reset your whole computer, everything erased. Your whole lonely loser life, crushed.

You didn’t want to seem phased despite the shake in your bones. He looked up at you, looking you in your eyes as if waiting for a response.

“Why are you doing this.”

You heard him groan at your question, before snatching your phone from in the desk. He clicked on your messages before going to the deleted.

“Mm, baby you really don’t remember me?”

He went on a number that was at the very bottom of the list, before recovering all that was gone.

With you on his lap and one hand on your thigh he began to scroll, thousands of messages from almost three years ago. By the looks of it, he was some guy you used to E-date. Until you inevitably blocked him because of the age difference between you two, the jealousy, and possessiveness-despite how much he evidently cared for you.

“All of this, and then you left me.”

His grip tightened, jaw clenched.

The balls to come here without a mask, knowing he wouldn’t have got caught. His gun on the opposite side of you, he just kept staring at it.

“But I forgive you, you couldn’t have done it on purpose.”

A lie he told himself, he began to dig into his pocket. Whatever it was had a circular shape. And god you hoped it wasn’t what you thought it was. In the midst of all his shuffling he pulled out a ring.

As much as you hated to say it, it was beautiful.

Covered in diamonds with a ruby in the middle, gold decorating the rims.

“I remember how you said you loved the color red, despite it being a last ditch effort to have a favorite color like everyone else did.”

Considerate, despite the breaking and entering, the threats, the gun. He already had the contract, all he needed was your finger.

His eyes stared like daggers into yours, gray stubble decorating his clean cut facial hair.

“Marry me. Just like we promised all those years ago.”

You could tell it wasn’t a question, it’s either you said yes or you thought he’d blow your fucking head off. When in reality if you said no he would’ve just stalked and harassed you until you had no choice but to say yes. Or kidnapped you-

“Do I have to?”

He froze, nails practically digging in your skin through the gloves.

He picked up the gun before pressing it to the side of your ribcage.

“Do you?”

Is all he said his voice a low growl. A soft yes left your lips, and all was subsided. A smile grew wide on his face from ear to ear as if he didn’t have a gun to you.

“I knew you loved me.”

He placed a kiss on your neck, eyes full of absolute joy. He put the gun down and grabbed your face, facing you toward him. Devilishly handsome with the mind of a psychopath.

“Do you know how much I’ve done to get here, from killing your boyfriend, murdering your teacher, even killed that celebrity you were obsessed with. Just to have you now sitting in my lap with a ring on both of our fingers.”

He kept covering you in soft kisses, you on the other hand trying hard to ignore the bulge in his pants.

“I’m sorry, it’s just your so pretty angel.”

Angel, that name ran through your mind like alarms. The day it fell down when he hacked your account and deleted every man from your phone.

“I’m sorry angel I just don’t know what got into me.”

You knew you were going to have passion marks, didn’t know how you were going to explain them to your parents.

“I love you.”

He kissed your lips, he stood up with you in his arms and placed on you the bed. Lips not daring to leave yours.

“Stop-” you mumbled out.

His eyes dropped, sadness filled them.

“It’s me sweetheart, your husband. All those times we said we wanted nothing more but to hold eachother.”

His hands made their way around your back and pulled you closer.

Nose to his area, making the size difference evident.

He grabbed your chin and tilted your head up.

“You can’t run from me, even now if you call the police they won’t catch me and we’ll end up right here.”

He began kissing your neck softly once again, each kiss deepened. He dragged a moan from you despite you wanting to not enjoy it, he knew how to make you feel good.

“Does that feel good baby?”

He knew it did, you could hear his chuckling under your moans, under his slyness.

“We don’t gotta’ do anything. Just wanna’ kiss you.”

He brought his mouth back to your lips, and sadly. You kissed him back, God. You felt his hard on grow the more you kissed him, his loud moans and whimpering just by your subtle touch.

“Say it, say you love me.”

He stopped and looked at you with desperate eyes, despite what he’s done you know how much he’s done for you. The money he sent, the gifts he bought, the reassurance and pure love he gave.

“I love you.”

-“mm fuck.”

God he was getting off by just your words, he turned around and covered his face with his hand. Trying his hardest not to touch himself to your voice like he used to.

“I fucking love you, you don’t know what you do to me.”

He groaned before coming back towards you, innocently kneeling and putting his head in your lap like a lost puppy dog.

Covering your thighs in soft kisses. He dug into his other pocket before pulling out another ring more expensive than the already pricey one.

“I almost forgot, that one was for engagement.”

And you knew, you were in for a hell of a ride.

[snoopyhughes]

I don't know how to feel, but someday I might (qh43)

in which Quinn will do just about anything to help his sweet girl.

This is 2.6k words of Quinn angst/fluff. It involves his girlfriend dealing with hate comments online. There are some hurtful things said about weight and appearances. This is a fem reader, with mentions of wearing makeup and dresses. She/her pronouns are used. Felt a little down lately and wanted to cheer myself up with some sweet Quinn. I hope you all enjoy this <3

There was almost nothing in the world that was easier than loving Quinn Hughes.

With his heart of gold and smile to match it, you found yourself falling in love with him almost instantly. It would have been impossible not to. To know Quinn is to love him. You doubt that there is anyone in the world who has met Quinn and has not been mesmerized by his charm and his raw kindness. Even his toughest opponents and fiercest rivals have nothing but kind things to say about your boy.

You met Quinn three years ago while you were on a girls trip at a rented lake house in Michigan. When you first saw your neighbor for the weekend, you were so caught off guard you tripped over your own feet and spilled your drink all over your feet. Quinn was quick to throw the towel he was holding out of his hands and on to your body to help you clean up the sticky mess that was now covering your body. Never mind the fact that in a house full of lazy boys, there was no other clean towels. It was just what he wanted to do.

Over stumbled apologies and blushing words, you exchanged numbers with Quinn. Neither of you were foolish enough to hide your intentions. At this point, you had both known you were only going to be in town for the weekend, but Quinn did not care, and neither did you. Your intentions were always to continue to talk to Quinn, even after the close proximity was no longer.

And you did. It was months of Facetimes and silly texts, until finally Quinn played a game near your town. Quinn insisted you came, and when you saw him again in the tunnels after the game, you knew you would never be able to move on, and Quinn felt the same way.

The start of the new season found you moving to Vancouver with Quinn. You were able to find a job similar to yours that was only 20 minutes away from Quinn's house. The choice seemed like a no brainer. And if you thought dating Quinn was a gift, nothing could compare to living with him. He was silly and considerate, adventurous and attentive. You found yourself falling in love with him more and more each day.

You were no stranger to Quinn's spotlight. It became more and more apparent to you when you moved to Vancouver. Almost every block had a Canucks fan, Canucks memorabilia, often sporting your boyfriend's face, loud and proud.

You were no stranger to the comments that other girls would make in the stands of Canucks games, or even at the bar while you were tucked right in to Quinn's side. They found Quinn to be as beautiful and as breathtaking as you did, and they paid no mind to the fact that you were hooked on his arm, or wearing his last name across your back, or even sitting with his family. Their intentions were to be with Quinn. They did not find you as a threat. But many made it their intentions to let you know that they were a threat.

You were public on social media, but with hardly any mention of your faceless boyfriend being Quinn Hughes. However, being the captain's girlfriend had automatically put you in the public eye, despite the fact that both you and Quinn tried your hardest to keep it on the down low publicly. It was challenging for Quinn to be in the spotlight at times, even after so long of being in it, and he wanted to make sure he tried his hardest to ensure that that spotlight never graced your wings. There was so much trouble that came with it, trouble that Quinn never wanted to expose you to. Nevertheless, some fans persisted.

"This is what you wear to stand next to the captain of the Vancouver Canucks? Maybe try a little harder next time," a comment had graced your post of your outfit from a Canucks gala. Despite your insistence that Quinn didn't pay for much, it hardly ever worked. Quinn had bought you the most beautiful dress, with a price tag you could not fathom. His insistence was that he saw you eyeing it on social media from a post of a fashion show, and he wanted you to have it.

The dress instantly made you feel beautiful, and Quinn's gaze and charming words made you feel beautiful tenfold. It was almost devastating how that feeling had disappeared so fast, just by the words and actions of a few cruel individuals who had made it their life's mission to tear you down.

Just one comment wouldn't hurt so bad. Unfortunately, there was tens of comments that point out a few flyaways, the creasing of your concealer, the cellulite on your arms, the rolls of your hips. You had tried your hardest not to let them bother you. But it bubbled up inside like a bad stew. When you find the one that hurt the worst, it caused you to sink to a feeling worse than you had ever felt. The comment read: "I don't understand why Quinn would want to be with a fat girl who does not know how to present herself in public. She has no redeeming features."

You tried your hardest to hide the comments from Quinn. You knew he rarely checked social media, so you made a promise to never let him know what they said and how they bothered you. You tried to insist to yourself that it was minuscule, it shouldn't matter. But the state Quinn found you in when he returned from his road trip was nothing but minuscule. It was no position he had ever found you in.

When Quinn FaceTimed you two nights ago after their game in Anaheim, you were wearing one of his Canucks blue t shirts, curled up in bed with your dog. When he walked through your bedroom doors, he found you in the same place, wearing the same t shirt, sporting the same hairstyle. His heart sunk to his toes. Were you hurt? How could he help you? What caused you to get into this state?

When he found you, your eyes were closed, but he knew you weren't sleeping. You had your head intentionally turned towards the wall, so as to not face Quinn. But even without seeing your face, he knew something was seriously wrong. And at that point, all he wanted was to see your beautiful face, to give him a little reassurance as to how you were feeling.

Quinn rounded the corner of the bed, kneeling down on the floor next to your head. "Hi sweetness," he muttered, running his fingers down the slope of your face. "Can I see your eyes, please?" He asked, causing you to shake your head lightly. He hummed at your answer, not wanting to push, but also knowing he had to get to the bottom of this.

"I brought you some takeout, your favorite. I know you have that project due in a few days and I figured you would be hungry." He had left the food on the table downstairs when he walked in to a silent house. No singing to music, no clambering of kitchen cabinets, no playing with the dog, nothing. The silence was eerie to him.

"I'm not," you muttered out in your smallest voice, cracking from lack of use, and even lack of water in your throat. You had a few sips over the last two days, but once it ran out, you couldn't get yourself to fill it. One of the only things you could manage to do the past two days was let the dog out. No matter how bad you were suffering, your sweet dog did not deserve to be punished for that. You let him out in the backyard only, not wanting anyone to see you walking on the sidewalk and be alerted by your state. There were a few other WAGs who lived in yours and Quinn's neighborhood, and at any sight of your despair, you know Quinn would have been alerted immediately.

"I'd like it if you could eat a little bit, though. I'm sure you're hungry, and your voice sounds dry. Can I fill your cup for you?" He posed it as a question, but he intended to fill it regardless of your answer. You shrugged, and Quinn took that as a win. He woke up your dog, assuming he had to go out. He journeyed downstairs and filled your cup. He also just let the dog out in the back, but promised a long walk in the morning. He only hoped you would come. It was something the two of you loved to do, walking the dog together after he came back from road trips.

As Quinn stood outside, the cold air biting at his shoulders, he tried to rack his brain of what could have possibly happened while he was gone. Did he forget something important? Did you miss a deadline? Did something happen at home? Nothing seemed to make sense, even when he tried to make sense of them.

Your dog was nothing if not loyal, so as soon as Quinn opened the door to let him back in, he bolted up the stairs to the bedroom, nosing his way through the door and back on to the bed with you. You put your hands in his fur, hoping to find some comfort in him. Silent tears streamed down your face. You saw the look on Quinn's face when he walked in to you. In a way, you were letting the trolls win even more. Quinn didn't deserve to come home to someone who couldn't get out of bed. At least, that's what the voices in your head were telling you.

Quinn walked quickly back up the stairs, but with less energy than your dog. He set your cup down on the bedside table, sitting on the edge of the bed, his hand rubbing your calf over the blankets. He knew at some point you would tell him what's wrong. He didn't want to force it out of you, but at the same time, Quinn had been alerted to the fact that you had not left the bed in days. He was concerned.

Your sniffle gave you away, not pretending to hide. Quinn knew you were struggling, and there was no point in trying to hide your mood. "Why are you crying, lovely? I'd really like to help you, but I'm not sure how," he muttered, leaning in to softly wipe your tears away. "It's nothing, I should be able to handle it by now." you muttered, hinting him to what was wrong without giving away any details.

"Handle what, babe? The roadtrips? I know they're hard. They're hard for me, too. I promise you're not alone in that." Your heart softened at his kind voice, at his genuine concern. Of course the roadtrips were hard, and in a way it helped to know that they were hard for him too, but you knew that wasn't what was bothering you.

You shook your head lightly, curling in further on yourself. At this point, Quinn was even more confused, but he knew that you weren't going to budge. "I'm just gonna get ready for bed, okay sweetheart? We can talk more in a minute," he went to get ready, and also to collect himself and his thoughts.

When he walked into the en suite bathroom, he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. Brock's girlfriend had texted him. His eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He had her number for a reason, but they obviously didn't text much individually.

"Hi Quinn, sorry to bother you so late," it started. "I was a bit worried about Y/N these past few days because she went radio silent over the weekend. We were supposed to have plans over the weekend, but she bailed with pretty much no explanation. So I did some digging on social media, and I found some pretty nasty comments on her most recent posts. I know people sometimes make comments to her at games, but these comments are new. I just wanted to let you know in case that was what was bothering her."

Quinn couldn't believe his eyes. These were some of the most hateful things he had ever read. And he had no idea they were saying things at games. He noticed that you started caring more but also less simultaneously somehow. She did much more hair and makeup than usual, while also covering her body entirely, almost drowning herself in her clothes.

Quinn was horrified. How long have you been dealing with this? Why didn't you say anything? Quinn couldn't get back to the bedroom fast enough. He rushed over to the bed, pulling you into a hug immediately. He felt your tears soaking his shirt, and Quinn had tears streaming steadily down his cheeks. "Why didn't you say anything? I'm so sorry, I love you," he whispered into your neck.

"I didn't want to bother you. I thought I should be able to deal with it by now. The jealousy, the mean girls. But it has gotten worse. They've been truly evil. I tried not to let it bother me, but I couldn't help it." You didn't want to remove yourself from Quinn's embrace. It was the first time you felt comfort in days.

"My love, you are never a bother. I'm appalled of these things they're saying, I can't believe you've been dealing with this in silence. No one deserves this, especially not you, my sweet girl." He coaxed you slowly to look him in the eyes, but you were still touching at almost every nerve ending.

"You are the most beautiful girl I've ever seen," he murmured, running his finger across your cheek. "And above all that, you're kind, loving, caring, empathetic, selfless, giving, and so many other amazing things. You are none of those things they say about you, okay? I'm so sorry, my angel. I know I can't fix it, but I want to. Tomorrow, we're gonna spend the whole day together, okay? And I'm gonna pamper you like you've always deserved. I'm so sorry that you've been going through this. I'm gonna fix it. I'm gonna make a statement, we can limit comments to friends only, make a separate, more private account. Whatever you want, baby. I just want this to be fixed and I want you to be okay. You don't deserve to suffer like this because of some evil, hateful people."

You knew Quinn would be helpful and caring if he ever found out about this, but you never expected all of this. You were exhausted and thrilled just thinking about everything. You had let those hateful people bring you down for so long, now you just wanted to be with your sweet boy.

"Can we do all that tomorrow? I just want to be with you. And I lied, I'm starving, I can smell the food from downstairs and I'm practically salivating," Quinn laughed out loud, causing you to smile for the first time in days. "There's my angel, I love you so much. We can do whatever you want, okay? Anything, my treat. Whatever you want. You deserve that damn food, okay? And everything else in the world, I love you so much."

Tears had begun to stream down your face for a different reason. You couldn't believe how lucky you were to have such a sweet, caring, and thoughtful man to have and to hold.

"I love you, Quinn. Thank you so much," you mumbled with watery eyes. When he leaned in and connected your lips with his, you knew you would get through this. Yes, their words still hurt. It wasn't fixed for good, it wasn't perfect, but you knew as long as you had Quinn by your side, you could make it through anything.

[sanjisluvbot]

Isekai Yandere Strawhats X Black Fem reader Chapter 19

Masterlist

Previous

It felt like the entirety of the last few months was a dream. Not being able to tell anyone about what you had experienced made you feel as if you were on the brink of insanity. You were back to the old life, not that you were angry, or sad for that matter. Your surroundings were just blurry and so was your mind. 

You didn’t pay attention to most things that were in front of you, that’s why it took you so long to realize that next week was thanksgiving. A part of you, the part that suffered and laughed with these people was still somehow stuck in that universe. You had read online a few years ago that prolonged time in another reality would make you feel every symptom you were feeling now, you ignored it. 

This wave of repressed emotions trampled you, it kept you stuck to the ground drowning in an abyss of confusion. “ Y/n I need you to go to the market adn buy the perishables for thursday and– are you listening to me?” knocking you back into your world you seen your mother looking at you in concern. Poor woman had absolutely no idea what was happening to you. 

Everyone around you noticed the change, they simply thought you were going through teenage angst or something else. You would laugh to yourself at times, imagine if they really knew of the turmoil you were dealing with. You would be dropped off at the hospital with quickness. 

At night you didn’t sleep the same, although you were almost always fighting for your life you were also accustomed to the sounds of the waves and the subtle rocking of the ship which helped you fall asleep. The night before thanksgiving you were forced to relive the events of what happened, as your cousin talked your ear off you slowly tuned out the noise when remembering the bone chilling statements of the strawhats. 

“ Y/n… if you leave you will regret this.”

Law was injured, he had been fighting both Luffy and Zoro to give you more time, the rest of the two crews were fighting amongst themselves while you were below deck of the polar tang trying to drown out the noise. The screams of your name were angry, betrayed, and vicious. Luffy shoved his way through Law stretching his arm to grab onto the ship, Law was quick though and used his ability before Zoro could strike him. You were hiding in his room with the door locked and his desk shoved in front of it, the two of you knew how much of a gamble you were taking. 

After agreeing that he would come with you and finally going through your plan you both silently agreed that maybe, in the future after Wano he would come. You knew that although it was unspoken that would probably never happen, you completely altered this timeline. This version of the one piece world was tainted by you in some of the worst ways, turning the heroes into villains that you seen them go up against and the villains that they’ve never even come face to face with. 

You wish you could have law by your side at this moment, and just as you were about the break down the door began to rattle on it’s hinges. 

“ Y/n! I know you’re in there, just come out. We can fix this, we can be as we used to. Don’t leave us.” Luffy sobbed. 

You quickly rushed under the bed. What a cliche you thought. You had to get serious now, it was time to go home and you weren’t going to let anyone or anything stop you. You were in over your head when you got here but you weren’t to blame. Who would’ve know that the people you admire the most would turn out to be monsters. 

When the door unlocked you were almost a memory, fading from this world and from the strawhast grap. Luffy quickly rushed under the bed trying to grasp at the strans off you, the anger in his body welling up. Law had slowly stalked in behind him with his infamous smirk, and Zoro was not too far behind. Angrily he dragged your feather of a body from beneath the bed, “ Y/n… if you leave you will regret this.”

Ashiver ran down your spine but you wouldn’t give himthe satisfaction of seeng you terrified for the last time. When your eyes fluttered yuou realizied you were back in your room, everything as it was and you decided to do the last thing in order to severe the link between that world nd yours. Without another thought you rushed around your room like a mad woman, scrambling for the bits and pieces you needed and when all was said and done you collapsed. 

When you came to it your mother was calling you and your cousin to run a few errands for her. The chill of the fall weather helped keep you grounded and you finally felt like you could fully enjoy their company without being lost in what should be forgotten memories. 

The next few months were a breath of fresh air. You were becoming whole again and life had more meaning than just escaping. You began speaking to people online about your experience, you put into a story. To others your story was fiction, a thought borne from the imagination plastered into the net for an online audience to enjoy. But to you, this was your life story, and you knew it would be far from over. 

The End… of chapter 1

Authors Note: I would just like to say how grateful I am. When I started this series and this account I was at the lowest point of my life, I thought I would live in a never-ending nightmare forever until I started writing. I am so happy that so many people enjoyed this series and I apologize for stringing you along after maybe like the tenth chapter, I want you to know that although at one point I didn't really know what to do with this story anymore I fully put my all into every chapter. I am not a perfect writer but the comments of you all saying how much you like my story and you want more chapters gave me a breath of life that I desperately needed in order to continue. Thank you all and I hope you continue to watch me grow as a writer. - Symphony

Tags: 🏷️: @chaichaiiskai @mizzhellsingsstuff @herwritingartcowboy @axulaphie @toshirolovebot @futmblr @rhicambo @marim0cha @sasukeswife3 @mitskikinnie100 @alaurannara @angstylittleb1tch

[somenamewithepineapple]

✨G’day, mate! It’s ya buddy, HEX anon again!✨

Thank you for your amazin’ reply to my previous message. Am I right to believe that Silrah being (like) a married couple is your headcanon as well as how you view their relationship? I kind of put two questions in one but got one answer for those, so I’m not entirely sure I understood that correctly 😅.

Now, I got some new questions for ya:

Could you tell me your top 3 in fic genres?

Would you prefer a fic with just Farah and Saul, or could I potentially add some side characters? If I can, are there any you wouldn't want in there?

What are your feelings about Farah’s nap? Are you a “fixing it with a resurrection” gal, or a “she’s been alive all this time” gal?

How do you think Christmas is celebrated in the Other World? Is it still called Christmas? And which member of our beloved Silrah pair would be most likely to act like a Scrooge? Or would neither of them?

Please be as elaborate as you'd like, I’m here to get to know you and figure out what would be the best present for you, so I need all the information I can get! Give me aaaaall the brain rot, don’t hold back 😀

Just for fun: Tea or coffee? Fairy lights or candles? Paper book or ebook?

See ya! Yeehaw! 🤠

I see someone is checking the event channel on discord. Blink twice if you're currently online :D

Yes. you're right. I mean I also did give one answer to two questions so I'd say I definitely see their relationship in the show as something like a soulmate bond (ugh this is so cheesy but whatever) and my headcanon would be that while they're not married, they basically have been behaving like a married couple for the last 30 or so years. They themselves probably don't even know if they're married or not because you know it's been so long and who knows what they signed when they got drunk at the campfire together? They certainly don't.

My top 3 are: (no particular order btw, I don't have a favourite child)

Enemies to Lovers babey whoohooo (is that a genre? I don't think so but I am also known for interpreting questions however the fuck I want so I'm sorry for misinterpreting your question to tell everyone how much I love this kind of fanfic lol)

AUs (the possibilities as well as the "I will love you in every life" gooooodness how beautiful is this? Am I right??)

Angst (but not the sad ending please don't kill anyone it's Christmas!!! however I'm always in for some drama and I'm 1000% certain Farah tried to hide all her severe injuries from Saul because there were more important matters according to her which resulted in Saul trying to gently tell her that a stab wound is in fact a matter of importance)

You can totally add however many side characters you want as long as it is not Dane (who the fuck is Dane anyway?)

Farah's nap... honestly I can do both, although I'd rather lean towards "She's been alive all along" because I refuse to believe in stupid/boring deaths. Also S2-Saul's non-reaction supports my theory

I know I know Christmas is a first-world holiday but what about mulled wine and fairy lights and christmas trees? So while I think they probably don't celebrate Christmas (or maybe became a thing some years ago) I always pictured the otherworld having some sort of winter solstice and new year's celebration with loads of cringe family dinners and gift-panicking and kissing under the mistletoe. What should I say, I'm a romantic. And speaking of romantics, I can picture Farah as an accidental Scrooge-Grinch but without the "messing up the holiday for everyone else" part. Of course our dear Saul would make it his mission to make her enjoy the days.

I hope my brain rot was helpful!

And:

Tea and coffee, depending on my mood and sometimes both at once

Fairy lights probably, mostly because I don't have to get a lighter for them but I want both on my Christmas tree! Because real candles are the real deal!

Paper books 100% except for when I'm travelling because that's when ebooks are more convenient.

Hasta the next time, HEX anon 😊☄️

[armpirate]

UNDER HIS SKIN || JJK || Ch. 23

Pairings: tattoist!jk x fem!reader

Genre: smut, angst, friends to lovers, tattoo au, virgin reader.

Summary: They say there are two versions for every story, and it's important to hear both of them. Everybody is hearing your side of the story, but it's just fair to get to know his.

After breaking up with his girlfriend, the only thing he wanted was to have fun with no attachment. You wanted to get rid of your virginity, and he wanted to tick you off his list. What he didn't expect was getting so emotionally attached to you that he would regret the deal.

Warnings: Nude dry humping, dirty talk

Previous || Next

MASTERLIST

I look at my reflection in the elevator's mirror when I get home, thinking about how Tae mocked me for this new hair color as soon as we got to the restaurant. Honestly, I don't know what I was thinking when I tinted it red, and the fact that this is just a consequence of that makes me want tear my hair apart. But then I remember how Y/n kept saying it looked good on me, and whether those words were genuine or a good attempt to make me feel better, it also helps me to find this new hair color quite appealing.

When I get out of the lift, I think she might not be here anymore. Probably she got bored, maybe her friends called her to hang out... which would also explain why she hasn't replied to my text yet. But when I cross the entrance door, and I see her head peeking up over the backrest of my coach, and I can't control the smile that's caused by the relief it causes me.

—You're here —I sigh, closing the door behind me.

I start taking my jacket off when her eyes land on me. And even if I can't see it, I can tell she's smiling behind the leather fabric of the sofa.

—You thought I'd leave?

—Nah —although the truth is that I was partly convinced she had left long ago—. But I'm happy to see you're here anyway.

Her eyes almost shut completely due to the big smile she keeps hiding, although she turns back to face the TV before I'm able to fully enjoy that sight.

—I sent you a pic of the tattoo —I mention, lying on the spot next to her—. You didn't see it?

—No, I haven't been on the phone today.

She lazily points to her phone, that's placed near the corner of the coffee table. It's something I already thought when I saw she hadn't been online all day, so I'm not really surprised by her answer.

—That sounds like you've been busy —seeing that her feet are resting on the edge of the table, I decide to join her—. What did you do?

—Not much —she shrugs—. I looked around the house, but found nothing interesting —she puckers her lips, making me chuckle due to the cute face she makes while thinking—; I watched a movie, too.

—What else? —I hit her side hopefully.

It doesn't take me much to know she hasn't done just that in the five hours I've been out. She looked around, watched a movie, and still didn't have time to reply to a text I sent just two hours ago? That, and how she's nervously biting her lower lip, while making sure her head doesn't make a wrong move to look up to me, is everything I need to know something else has happened while I was away. But I wait for her to bring it up.

In the little time we've been around each other, I learned that she is unable to keep some thoughts to herself. She tends to overthink and try to calm them down, but lately she's started to be more open. Always doing the same nervous lip biting and head tilting before she dropped the question.

—Leslie only wanted to apologize the other day?

Among every little thing she could be curious about, the mention of Leslie surprises me. I frown at her, hoping she explains what's up with that question. But, instead, she opens her eyes a bit more, insisting to get an answer from me.

—That's what's kept you busy all morning?

The light comment does nothing to her. Her look intensifies at time goes by, and I'm sure she won't say anything else until I finally give in.

—I thought that's what she wanted —I sigh, finally giving Y/n what she wanted—. That's what she said. But she kept saying how dumb she was, and how much she missed what we had —I grimace at my own words—. I didn't need her to tell me directly she wanted to come back. And I didn't like the direction the conversation was taking, so I left and texted you to meet up —I scratch my nape—. She's also been calling me almost every day, and has sent me texts trying to hang out.

Y/n nods, pressing her lips together again as she tries to process the information I've just given her. I didn't want her to overthink the night we made up, I just wanted to enjoy her company without her being insecure about the possibility of me going back to my ex. And right now I'm not really sure if it was a good idea to hide it from her that night.

—Sounds like a stalker —she murmurs.

—Sounds more like someone who's been dumped and thought her plan b would still be available for her —I click my tongue—. She'll get over it.

At least, I hope so after she was blocked.

Instead of going on with the conversation, there's silence. And I'm dumb enough to think it's over, letting myself get comfortable and relax, while resting my head on the backrest.

But she isn't done, she was just thinking about what to say next.

—You could've told me last night —she lets out a sigh.

—It was late, and I wanted to enjoy being with you after not seeing you for a week. I told you the only relevant thing for me from that night, which was Leslie apologizing —I try so hard to show I'm relaxed, when actually I'm scared of her getting mad at this whole situation—. I don't care whether she wants to come back or not, because I don't want to.

—You know, it'd have been nice just to be prepared when she showed up here today —she turns to me.

Why the fuck was Leslie here?

I frown, looking at her confused, while she's just staring at me concerned.

—What was she doing here?

—She came here looking for you —she shrugs—, said you two still had some things to talk about.

If I thought I was clear enough with Leslie, then I was wrong. So now, directly saying I don't want to go back with her, translates in I still have some things to discuss with her regarding us? Somebody should've warned me...

—I thought what I told her the last time would be enough to make her step back —I sit properly next to her—. That's everything she said? —looking into her eyes, I waits for her answer.

—She didn't say much more —she shrugs again—. Not like she needed to say much more anyway.

—I swear there's nothing going on. What I told you is everything there is to it.

—Okay —she looks away—. There's no need to get so worked up over it. Even if there was something to it, you can do whatever you want.

—There is. Because I care about what you think.

We stare into each other's eyes for a long minute, before she speaks again just to repeat what she's just said.

—That's great, but doesn't change the fact that you could do whatever you want.

And for some reason, those words annoy the fuck out of me. I know what she means, I know she's trying not to cross boundaries, but what the fuck she means with "I can do whatever I want"?

—Not again —I stand up, annoyed with her and annoyed with myself, going back and forward my own tracks—. I can, but I still care about your opinion. And that's why I texted you that night. You're the only person I can think of right now, so I don't care about what Leslie wants.

—And I'm just saying I have no say on anything.

And I'm really wondering if she's this thick on purpose, or if she genuinely isn't able to see that right now I'm only crazy for her.

—But you do —I kneel in front of her, trying to get all her attention—. You're unbelievable —a small chuckle leaves my lips—. I told you I'm into you, into you only, and your head is still spinning around trying to convince yourself you have no say on what I do. You do, so don't tell me I can do whatever I want.

She's going to answer before even trying to process what I've just said. And it's obvious, by the look on her face, that she seems to finally be getting what I'm trying to say now. Y/n looks down at me, eyebrows slightly frowned, while her lips part and momentarily shake, before she starts speaking.

—Well... —she licks her lips, and lowers her body a little— Thank god you said that, because I didn't mean it at all.

I sigh hard, deep inside. A light feeling of relief invades my body when she says that with a shy smile.

—I know —I lie, silently chuckling. I actually was shitting my pants thinking she'd ask why I was even thinking that way—. Now, honest opinion on what you think I should do?

—There isn't much you could do right now —she puckers her lips, thinking—. You made clear you were happy right now —I nod—, you've been avoiding her —god knows I've tried my best—, you also told her you're seeing someone...

Oh... Of course Leslie told her that.

—I knew you'd bring that up —I let a mischivious smile adorn my face—. Yeah, great girl indeed —I tease her.

—Are you going to talk in third person about me now? —she raises one of her eyebrows, adding up to her sassy tone.

—Who said it was you? —I tease again, using the same tone.

—Is it not? —she crosses her arms over her chest.

He presses his lips together, trying to -needlessly- hide the smile that's forming on his face while we keep eye contact. He scrunches his nose again before looking away.

—I'm the great girl —I confirm, relaxing on the couch while letting my body fall back until it hits the backrest.

I feel like there are a lot of things that I should say right now, it just seems like the right moment to do so, but I hold back. I think it'll be enough with the conversation we've had just now, and seeing her positive answer is enough for me.

Trying to avoid my long tongue from running free after looking into her eyes for a little longer, I get up from the floor. I'm not really hungry -honestly, I ordered the sandwich thinking it'd be smaller, but that thing was an abomination. I know she hasn't had lunch, most probably, though. So I'll make something for her either way.

✸ ✸ ✸

We don't do anything special for the rest of the afternoon, we just lie on the couch, watching the first show that popped in my TV screen after I opened Netflix. Honestly, I wasn't even planning on watching this -basically because it seemed one of those cringey shows that drops dumb jokes for no reason at all. But any excuse is good to be around her, at this point.

When I sneakily turn to her, I catch her looking at me, but it doesn't seem like she's looking at me. Her eyes are lost while her mind is working on something else, and I just happen to be in the middle of her field of view.

—What are you thinking?

Dragged back to this moment, she blinks a few times, finally looking into my eyes and paying attention to me. Although it doesn't last much. Y/n moves her eyes away from mine fast, trying to keep her gaze somewhere else.

—Umm —she looks at the TV—. I was thinking... of a way to tell you this show is awful.

—I heard you laughing just ten minutes ago —I fake amusement, throwing my head back to the backrest.

—Yes, by how bad it is —she replies back—. Let's choose something else —she tries to reach the remote right after.

Finding a new entertainment that's actually worth it, I start teasing her by moving the remote away every time she tries to reach it. But of course she fights back, finding weak spots on my ribs that makes my whole body squirm and flinch when she pinches it.

—Give it to me. C'mon.

I'm so concentrated on dodging her fingers, that I'm not aware both of our bodies are at the edge of the couch until it's too late. Y/n makes one final move that makes her lose her balance, but she doesn't fall by herself, she drags me along by grabbing the collar of my white t-shirt.

—Look what you've done —I accuse her, placing my hands on both sides of her head so I don't rely the weight of my body on her.

—You should've given me the remote. Technically, this is your fault.

—Is it?

It must be the tone I use, or the way I keep switching where I draw my eyes to between her lips and her eyes. When I look at them again, they have a darker tone, and when I look down at her lips, she's licking them, making them shine under the light after coating them with a thin coat of spit. I move her hair away from her face, brushing some locks away.

—I'll take the blame for it, then —I whisper.

I swear every time we kiss it feels completely different. The way her lips suck on mine, and her tongue licks my lower lip drives me insane every time. She moves her thighs under me, placing them around my hips so I can place myself more comfortably between them.

And the huge mistake that is...

My body fights itself, the little common sense I have left against the primitive I need to bury myself deep inside her, when she starts rolling her hips against my growing bulge.

She doesn't give me time to stop anything, or ask her if she's alright, her voice drops those words that leave me shocked for a few seconds:

—I want to do it.

I move my head back, trying to get a better view of her face. I should be feeling great after hearing her say that, it's exactly why all of this started. But instead of letting my body run wild with her offer, I think of what her thoughts could be after we're done tonight.

Losing her first time after making out on the floor because we're both horny and bored? Doesn't seem like the best start, and I definitely don't want her thinking it could've been a way better experience in a few weeks. She's waited a lot already, and I think I should be at the same level of her expectations.

—I'm ready —she repeats—. I want to do more.

—Babe, I'm sure you are —I try to calm her down, rubbing my thumb over her belly. —. But it's your first time, it should be more special than this.

She's disappointed, and she tries to hide it by nodding several times and looking somewhere else. Masturbating each other? We've done that a few times already. Oral sex? It's usually what comes after the masturbation, and I completley understand she's eager for the whole thing after a few months.

If only there was a way to give her the level of intimacy she wants, without doing anything she'd regret...

As I try to find a way to get her to feel better, I thank god for my twisted and horny mind.

—Let's go.

I get up from the floor, helping her to stand up by pulling her arm. It genuinely seems like I've found the biggest discovery by the way I drag her to the bedroom.

—I thought you said you wanted it to be special.

—And I stand by that —I turn to her—. If you want to do it, we'll do it right now and here. But I'm asking you to wait, so I can make it worth it.

Giving her one last chance to choose among the options she has, she clicks her tongue and looks at me with curious eyes.

—What was your idea then?

—I want you so bad, cocktease —I play with the button of my pants—. Only thing I was able to think about today was you wearing this shirt —my fingers move down her zip slowly—. Waiting for me here... You have no idea what you do to me —I whisper on her lips.

Her determined hands move to my jeans, unzipping them. But instead of pushing them down, she sneaks her hands under my t-shirt, lifting the fabric while her fingers make shivers run through my spine as they go up on my torso.

—Should I keep it on? —she teases me, while her hands ghost near my nipples.

—Please, don't.

She giggles when I answer that way, and that sexy smile only urges me to lean over her so I could kiss her neck while fighting with the thick fabric of my jeans to get rid of them. I lose my balance a few times as I take them off, and she laughes at that.

—You're laughing? —I try to sound as offended and challenging as possible, but doesn't seem like that intimidates her anymore— Let's see if you keep laughing.

I bite her lower lip, leaving her eager for another sloppy kiss when I take my t-shirt off and let my body fall over the matress, crawling until I'm sitting in the middle with my back resting against the headboard.

—Take everything off.

I regret saying those words as soon as she starts shwoing off her soft skin, being incredibly right under the lamp light of my nightstands. Her perked nipples have me licking my lips unconsciously, remembering intensely the rugosity of her hard buttons on my tongue.

—Everything —I remind her when I see she's still keeping her panties.

—You, too —her eyes point to my boxers.

We're both so desperate to get on each other's skin that we waist no time getting rid of the last pieces of fabric.

—Come here.

Y/n crawls on the bed, until she finally reaches me, kneeling in between my thighs. Maybe I'm a bit rough by the way I cup her cheeks and link our lips into a short sloppy kiss, but I just can't resist her.

—You're so perfect —I growl, lips still wet with our spit—. So fucking beautiful —I pecks her lips—. You trust me?

—Yes.

Not wanting to move away from her, I move our bodies over the mattress, until she's finally stradling my belly.

—Remember when you rode my thigh?

—Yeah.

—Do the same thing on my cock.

She looks confused, but still tries to place herself in a way to be able to do what I'm asking her. Her hands shake doubtful, and she moves her head trying to find the right angle a few times.

—Like this —I stop her, with my hand on her hip.

Trying to make my dick lie flat on my stomach, I hold it by the tip while I guide her body by the hip until I can feel the wetness from her pussy coating my shaft. I mark the initial rhythm, with both hands now on her hips so I can move her body on my cock. I do it a few times, slow, feeling her pussy clench every time I push her back.

I can tell she's nervous over being on top right now, but I know she's ready to try when both of her hands find support on my abs. Slowly, my hands stop adding pressure on her body, just to find out she's been moving her hips on her own. Her body swings with the rhythm I marked at the beginning, coating my balls with her juices before she's back on my tip. But it only takes her a few seconds riding me that way to start moving faster.

—That's it —I moan—. Make me feel it.

I thought I'd be ready for the image I have ahead of me right now, but nothing would've prepared me for the way her body moves, with her tits bouncing in the air before she allows her hands get a hold of them. And all of that while she's giving me one of the dirtiest, yet -ironically- the most innocent, look she has ever given me. And fuck, those moans and gasps that make my dick leak and twitch with every stroke of her folds.

She can't be real.

But while I admire her, I notice something is off with her. Her eyes are closed, and her head is slightly thrown back, but her eyebrows are frowned and her head is tilting while her lips pucker in disgust.

Not again.

Supporting my body with one of my elbows, I reach to her cheek with my free hand.

—Babe, look at me.

I can't explain what I feel when she opens her eyes and everything seems to be okay.

—Are you okay? —she nods— Sure? —she nods again.

—It's just... I'm not sure if I'm doing it okay.

But I know she's lying. She's always been vocal whenever she was unsure of whether I liked what she did or not. Not to mention the full concentration look she has plastered on her face whenever that happens. I also know she might've lied because she doesn't want to ruin the whole mood, and I don't want to make her feel that way either.

—You're doing great —I assure her, kissing her shoulder—. Keep moving like that —my hands go back to her hips.

Acting as if she needed help, I go back at guiding her moves, moving her in a way that her clit can feel more pressure with every stroke.

Suspicious of all the problems coming whenever she closes her eyes, I scold her when I realize she's about to do it again.

—Keep your eyes on me —I order her—. I want to see your eyes when you cum.

She digs her nails on my skin after a few more movements, and those sexy moans that comes out of her mouth, and her needy gasps trying to reach her high, are the last thing I need before I cum with her, spilling all my load over my abs.

She lowers her moves when she seems to be aware of my orgasm, but I don't allow her to stop, controlling her hips, making her rub against my cock as fast as she's able to. But I'm also greedy, and not only I want her orgasm, I want her to get it by herself while my hands enjoy every single spot in her body.

—Cum on my cock —I encourage her—. Let me feel how much you liked it.

Her speed goes crazy after that, holding onto my arms so she's focusing completely on the tingling feeling that's forming in her pussy, and infecting her whole body. With a hand on her jaw, I force her to look up to me, opening her eyes surprised by the sudden touch just when she was about to close them again.

I make my best at looking after her once we're both done, avoiding her resting her body on mine so she doesn't get full of the mess I made. And once we both are clean enough, and back on the bed, I don't even process it before I pull her closer to my body, feeling her rest her head on my chest.

—How was it? —she asks shyly.

—Tonight it was confirmed you showed up in my life just to kill me —I chuckle.

She's either a goddess that came to pay me for all good I've done in my previous life, or she's the biggest punishes I have to deal for the mistakes I've done in the past. Either way, she's insanely -and dangerously- perfect.

We stay in silence for a few seconds, allowing my brain to come up with a risky -yet exciting idea.

—Let's go on a date —I suggest.

—Hmm? —she opens her eyes, looking up to me again.

—A date. Tomorrow night.

—I'm working tomorrow night.

—I'll pick you up when you finish your shift —I explain her—. Are you with Tam tomorrow?

—Nope.

—Then it's settled —I hold her tight—. Do you want to?

Yeah... It's lovely and all. But I didn't even try to think about the small detail that she should want it just as much as I do. Imagine if after coming up with the idea, she says she doesn't want to do it.

—A date as in?

—As in two people that clearly are into each other and want to do something different. What do you think?

She nods fast, with that cute smile that urges me to hide her tight to protect her from everything that's wrong.

[tameblog]

  Welcome to the post I thought I’d never write. When people asked me how to solve paper clutter problems and implement a paper organization system, I would grimace (and grunt a little) and say I couldn’t help them. I’d share how I had reduced paper clutter so it no longer caused me significant angst (just minimal annoyance) by decluttering and putting a few habits into place. But solve it? No. Now, I have a solution. I set up this system based on advice from my lovely co-instructors in the Take Your House Back course: Dawn (of The Minimal Mom) and Cas (of Clutterbug and host of HGTV’s Hot Mess House). They’re the ones I learned from, and they give a lot more detail about organizing paper and ideas to adjust for your unique personality and home. I’ve been using this paper organizing system for about four months now. I’ll keep you updated on how it continues to work (or not) as time goes on, but this system has worked better for me than anything else I’ve tried. Note for the overwhelmed: If thinking about all the paper clutter in your home wakes you up at night, take a deep breath. At the end of this post, I link to my advice for reducing paper clutter and how to break through the feeling of being completely overwhelmed. I set up a system for dealing with incoming paper BEFORE I got existing paper piles under control. I really believe this advice from Dawn was the biggest game-changer for me. Paper is going to keep coming. It always keeps coming, and that’s what makes it so maddening. Paper . . . never . . . stops. But just like doing the dishes consistently made a bigger and more lasting impact on my home than spending one weekend a month frantically cleaning, going ahead and dealing with incoming mail before I’d dealt with the backlog of paper had a huge impact. Dealing with what came in for one day wasn’t intimidating.  Dealing with each day’s mail in this new system gave me confidence that the system worked and that gave me confidence in myself that I could maintain this system. I stuck to a few broad categories. Cas recommends sticking to broad categories when filing paper, and she calls this a “less organized approach.” Y’all know that’s right up my alley. The general idea is that an organization system for paper is more practical and maintainable if you keep it simple. I chose to use three categories for filing paper: To Do, Wait and See, and 2021. They’re pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll explain anyway. The To Do file is for anything that requires an action.  (I believe Dawn calls hers an Action File.) I put driver’s license renewal letters, car- registration stuff, bills to pay (that aren’t able to be completely switched to online notices), and such in that file. I stuck graduation announcements in the To Do file until I bought gifts and sent them. In previous years, I’d stacked the announcements in a “good” spot, but the piles morphed and grew and gathered unrelated stuff until finding them was a hassle and I worried I’d missed one. The Wait and See file is for things that don’t require an action, but that I might need later. I put coupons (for specific things, not just the whole coupon insert) in there, the card for the tree-trimmer guy, etc. The 2021 file is for anything that is important for this year such as home maintenance records and anything we need to keep for taxes. (Like the donation receipt from our Suburban!) We already had an established spot (where we’d look first) for the big important stuff like social security cards and birth certificates and driver’s ed certificates. That spot works, so we’re keeping it.   I set up a vertical filing system for organizing paper. Cas gives organizing strategies based on the personality of the person she’s helping. She said I needed to focus on vertical storage for paper, so I bought the filing system that nails to the wall. I was skeptical based on very-long-ago experiences trying systems like this. I realize now that my skepticism/fear-of-failure was based on the fact that I’d tried systems like this before I understood what I now call the Container Concept. When I didn’t understand that Containers are meant to serve as limits, I kept on piling. Shoving. Overfilling. So the memories I had of these kinds of organizing solutions was of papers sticking up and out and files full to bursting. Or falling off the wall. Because I didn’t know that the problem was that I was trying to keep too much, I decided there was something wrong with the system and went back to piles. The vertical system works for me because it’s nailed to the wall. It’s immovable. Unshiftable. As someone who doesn’t see incremental mess, I could set up a nifty horizontal system, but wouldn’t notice it again until it had fallen over and morphed into a surface-covering pile. And the finite space (contain-ers) for three categories that are supposed to cover all the paper that enters my home makes me level up my existing paper-clutter-reducing strategies. I already took the mail straight to the trash can/recycling bin. For years, that has been my number one way to avoid paper piling up in my home. Out of 7 pieces of mail, usually at least 5 are trash. Now, though, because I have to decide on a definite category for each piece of paper I keep, I find myself opening up important-looking envelopes that I used to stick into my paper tub just because they looked important. Turns out, a lot of things that look important aren’t actually important. Or maybe they’re important enough to look at, but not important enough to keep. Now, I find that out of 7 pieces of mail, I can usually get rid of 6! And often all 7! With definite (though broad) categories, I’m eliminating so much more paper. (Here’s my affiliate link to the vertical filing system.)   The experience and confidence I gained made it easier to purge old paper piles. After about six weeks of dealing with incoming mail and gaining confidence that it really was possible to put everything that came into the house into one of those categories, I started giving my tub full of old paper the side-eye. I wanted it gone. Not that I was perky or giddy about dealing with it. I didn’t want to spend my Saturday morning purging paper, but it was bugging me more and more. I got started by giving myself permission to do the easy stuff first. I would aim to reduce the pile by going through it, only worrying about getting rid of super-obvious trash. This achieves two things. Fist, it reduces the size of the pile which reduces the feeling of being overwhelmed. Second, it makes me look. As I go through the pile, I see what’s in it. Just knowing (instead of imagining that everything is painfully important) helps me feel ready to tackle the harder stuff in the pile sooner. But when I started non-commitally going through the pile of old paper, I shocked myself by finishing. Completely. I found that my experience with the simple organizing system made it easy to file or purge everything in the pile. Setting up a system for incoming paper helped me purge old paper. Really! Honesty Moment At first, I didn’t like how the hanging wall files looked. I preferred my plain, boring, empty wall, and it took me some time to get used to seeing them. I added the blue file folders and that made it look better and stay a little neater than when it was just paper in the black wire thingies. But I learned to be okay with it because I LOVED seeing the clear counter just inside my kitchen where a tub full of paper was for  years. I’ll take a hidden wall (it’s behind the door of my bedroom) any day over that open-to-the-public eyesore spot in the kitchen. The Take Your House Back course is SO HELPFUL! Take Your House Back is open for registration through September 15th! I have absolutely loved hearing from so many people about how this course has changed their homes. And I’ve learned, too! I’m sharing screenshots below of compliments on the course on a recent video. I think that first one covers all the bases! And the second image shows the responses to that comment from others in the course! Go to TakeYourHouseBack.com to sign up!   As promised, here are other posts about paper from the past. The focus here is on REDUCING paper, and there’s a lot of value in that! This system was so much easier to implement because I’d already reduced so much paper in our home! If you can’t even imagine three categories or three files for your paper, focus on reducing paper for now. I know you’re overwhelmed, and I understand. These links are for you:   How to Reduce Paper Clutter The Thing About Paper Piles 022 Reducing Paper Clutter Podcast Break Decluttering Paralysis (Even Paper)   Related Posts: !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments);if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n; n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script','//connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '1712009765708377'); fbq('track', "PageView");(function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.8&appId=593275940768565"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Source link

[ramestoryworld]

  Welcome to the post I thought I’d never write. When people asked me how to solve paper clutter problems and implement a paper organization system, I would grimace (and grunt a little) and say I couldn’t help them. I’d share how I had reduced paper clutter so it no longer caused me significant angst (just minimal annoyance) by decluttering and putting a few habits into place. But solve it? No. Now, I have a solution. I set up this system based on advice from my lovely co-instructors in the Take Your House Back course: Dawn (of The Minimal Mom) and Cas (of Clutterbug and host of HGTV’s Hot Mess House). They’re the ones I learned from, and they give a lot more detail about organizing paper and ideas to adjust for your unique personality and home. I’ve been using this paper organizing system for about four months now. I’ll keep you updated on how it continues to work (or not) as time goes on, but this system has worked better for me than anything else I’ve tried. Note for the overwhelmed: If thinking about all the paper clutter in your home wakes you up at night, take a deep breath. At the end of this post, I link to my advice for reducing paper clutter and how to break through the feeling of being completely overwhelmed. I set up a system for dealing with incoming paper BEFORE I got existing paper piles under control. I really believe this advice from Dawn was the biggest game-changer for me. Paper is going to keep coming. It always keeps coming, and that’s what makes it so maddening. Paper . . . never . . . stops. But just like doing the dishes consistently made a bigger and more lasting impact on my home than spending one weekend a month frantically cleaning, going ahead and dealing with incoming mail before I’d dealt with the backlog of paper had a huge impact. Dealing with what came in for one day wasn’t intimidating.  Dealing with each day’s mail in this new system gave me confidence that the system worked and that gave me confidence in myself that I could maintain this system. I stuck to a few broad categories. Cas recommends sticking to broad categories when filing paper, and she calls this a “less organized approach.” Y’all know that’s right up my alley. The general idea is that an organization system for paper is more practical and maintainable if you keep it simple. I chose to use three categories for filing paper: To Do, Wait and See, and 2021. They’re pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll explain anyway. The To Do file is for anything that requires an action.  (I believe Dawn calls hers an Action File.) I put driver’s license renewal letters, car- registration stuff, bills to pay (that aren’t able to be completely switched to online notices), and such in that file. I stuck graduation announcements in the To Do file until I bought gifts and sent them. In previous years, I’d stacked the announcements in a “good” spot, but the piles morphed and grew and gathered unrelated stuff until finding them was a hassle and I worried I’d missed one. The Wait and See file is for things that don’t require an action, but that I might need later. I put coupons (for specific things, not just the whole coupon insert) in there, the card for the tree-trimmer guy, etc. The 2021 file is for anything that is important for this year such as home maintenance records and anything we need to keep for taxes. (Like the donation receipt from our Suburban!) We already had an established spot (where we’d look first) for the big important stuff like social security cards and birth certificates and driver’s ed certificates. That spot works, so we’re keeping it.   I set up a vertical filing system for organizing paper. Cas gives organizing strategies based on the personality of the person she’s helping. She said I needed to focus on vertical storage for paper, so I bought the filing system that nails to the wall. I was skeptical based on very-long-ago experiences trying systems like this. I realize now that my skepticism/fear-of-failure was based on the fact that I’d tried systems like this before I understood what I now call the Container Concept. When I didn’t understand that Containers are meant to serve as limits, I kept on piling. Shoving. Overfilling. So the memories I had of these kinds of organizing solutions was of papers sticking up and out and files full to bursting. Or falling off the wall. Because I didn’t know that the problem was that I was trying to keep too much, I decided there was something wrong with the system and went back to piles. The vertical system works for me because it’s nailed to the wall. It’s immovable. Unshiftable. As someone who doesn’t see incremental mess, I could set up a nifty horizontal system, but wouldn’t notice it again until it had fallen over and morphed into a surface-covering pile. And the finite space (contain-ers) for three categories that are supposed to cover all the paper that enters my home makes me level up my existing paper-clutter-reducing strategies. I already took the mail straight to the trash can/recycling bin. For years, that has been my number one way to avoid paper piling up in my home. Out of 7 pieces of mail, usually at least 5 are trash. Now, though, because I have to decide on a definite category for each piece of paper I keep, I find myself opening up important-looking envelopes that I used to stick into my paper tub just because they looked important. Turns out, a lot of things that look important aren’t actually important. Or maybe they’re important enough to look at, but not important enough to keep. Now, I find that out of 7 pieces of mail, I can usually get rid of 6! And often all 7! With definite (though broad) categories, I’m eliminating so much more paper. (Here’s my affiliate link to the vertical filing system.)   The experience and confidence I gained made it easier to purge old paper piles. After about six weeks of dealing with incoming mail and gaining confidence that it really was possible to put everything that came into the house into one of those categories, I started giving my tub full of old paper the side-eye. I wanted it gone. Not that I was perky or giddy about dealing with it. I didn’t want to spend my Saturday morning purging paper, but it was bugging me more and more. I got started by giving myself permission to do the easy stuff first. I would aim to reduce the pile by going through it, only worrying about getting rid of super-obvious trash. This achieves two things. Fist, it reduces the size of the pile which reduces the feeling of being overwhelmed. Second, it makes me look. As I go through the pile, I see what’s in it. Just knowing (instead of imagining that everything is painfully important) helps me feel ready to tackle the harder stuff in the pile sooner. But when I started non-commitally going through the pile of old paper, I shocked myself by finishing. Completely. I found that my experience with the simple organizing system made it easy to file or purge everything in the pile. Setting up a system for incoming paper helped me purge old paper. Really! Honesty Moment At first, I didn’t like how the hanging wall files looked. I preferred my plain, boring, empty wall, and it took me some time to get used to seeing them. I added the blue file folders and that made it look better and stay a little neater than when it was just paper in the black wire thingies. But I learned to be okay with it because I LOVED seeing the clear counter just inside my kitchen where a tub full of paper was for  years. I’ll take a hidden wall (it’s behind the door of my bedroom) any day over that open-to-the-public eyesore spot in the kitchen. The Take Your House Back course is SO HELPFUL! Take Your House Back is open for registration through September 15th! I have absolutely loved hearing from so many people about how this course has changed their homes. And I’ve learned, too! I’m sharing screenshots below of compliments on the course on a recent video. I think that first one covers all the bases! And the second image shows the responses to that comment from others in the course! Go to TakeYourHouseBack.com to sign up!   As promised, here are other posts about paper from the past. The focus here is on REDUCING paper, and there’s a lot of value in that! This system was so much easier to implement because I’d already reduced so much paper in our home! If you can’t even imagine three categories or three files for your paper, focus on reducing paper for now. I know you’re overwhelmed, and I understand. These links are for you:   How to Reduce Paper Clutter The Thing About Paper Piles 022 Reducing Paper Clutter Podcast Break Decluttering Paralysis (Even Paper)   Related Posts: !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments);if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n; n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script','//connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '1712009765708377'); fbq('track', "PageView");(function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.8&appId=593275940768565"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Source link

[alexha2210]

  Welcome to the post I thought I’d never write. When people asked me how to solve paper clutter problems and implement a paper organization system, I would grimace (and grunt a little) and say I couldn’t help them. I’d share how I had reduced paper clutter so it no longer caused me significant angst (just minimal annoyance) by decluttering and putting a few habits into place. But solve it? No. Now, I have a solution. I set up this system based on advice from my lovely co-instructors in the Take Your House Back course: Dawn (of The Minimal Mom) and Cas (of Clutterbug and host of HGTV’s Hot Mess House). They’re the ones I learned from, and they give a lot more detail about organizing paper and ideas to adjust for your unique personality and home. I’ve been using this paper organizing system for about four months now. I’ll keep you updated on how it continues to work (or not) as time goes on, but this system has worked better for me than anything else I’ve tried. Note for the overwhelmed: If thinking about all the paper clutter in your home wakes you up at night, take a deep breath. At the end of this post, I link to my advice for reducing paper clutter and how to break through the feeling of being completely overwhelmed. I set up a system for dealing with incoming paper BEFORE I got existing paper piles under control. I really believe this advice from Dawn was the biggest game-changer for me. Paper is going to keep coming. It always keeps coming, and that’s what makes it so maddening. Paper . . . never . . . stops. But just like doing the dishes consistently made a bigger and more lasting impact on my home than spending one weekend a month frantically cleaning, going ahead and dealing with incoming mail before I’d dealt with the backlog of paper had a huge impact. Dealing with what came in for one day wasn’t intimidating.  Dealing with each day’s mail in this new system gave me confidence that the system worked and that gave me confidence in myself that I could maintain this system. I stuck to a few broad categories. Cas recommends sticking to broad categories when filing paper, and she calls this a “less organized approach.” Y’all know that’s right up my alley. The general idea is that an organization system for paper is more practical and maintainable if you keep it simple. I chose to use three categories for filing paper: To Do, Wait and See, and 2021. They’re pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll explain anyway. The To Do file is for anything that requires an action.  (I believe Dawn calls hers an Action File.) I put driver’s license renewal letters, car- registration stuff, bills to pay (that aren’t able to be completely switched to online notices), and such in that file. I stuck graduation announcements in the To Do file until I bought gifts and sent them. In previous years, I’d stacked the announcements in a “good” spot, but the piles morphed and grew and gathered unrelated stuff until finding them was a hassle and I worried I’d missed one. The Wait and See file is for things that don’t require an action, but that I might need later. I put coupons (for specific things, not just the whole coupon insert) in there, the card for the tree-trimmer guy, etc. The 2021 file is for anything that is important for this year such as home maintenance records and anything we need to keep for taxes. (Like the donation receipt from our Suburban!) We already had an established spot (where we’d look first) for the big important stuff like social security cards and birth certificates and driver’s ed certificates. That spot works, so we’re keeping it.   I set up a vertical filing system for organizing paper. Cas gives organizing strategies based on the personality of the person she’s helping. She said I needed to focus on vertical storage for paper, so I bought the filing system that nails to the wall. I was skeptical based on very-long-ago experiences trying systems like this. I realize now that my skepticism/fear-of-failure was based on the fact that I’d tried systems like this before I understood what I now call the Container Concept. When I didn’t understand that Containers are meant to serve as limits, I kept on piling. Shoving. Overfilling. So the memories I had of these kinds of organizing solutions was of papers sticking up and out and files full to bursting. Or falling off the wall. Because I didn’t know that the problem was that I was trying to keep too much, I decided there was something wrong with the system and went back to piles. The vertical system works for me because it’s nailed to the wall. It’s immovable. Unshiftable. As someone who doesn’t see incremental mess, I could set up a nifty horizontal system, but wouldn’t notice it again until it had fallen over and morphed into a surface-covering pile. And the finite space (contain-ers) for three categories that are supposed to cover all the paper that enters my home makes me level up my existing paper-clutter-reducing strategies. I already took the mail straight to the trash can/recycling bin. For years, that has been my number one way to avoid paper piling up in my home. Out of 7 pieces of mail, usually at least 5 are trash. Now, though, because I have to decide on a definite category for each piece of paper I keep, I find myself opening up important-looking envelopes that I used to stick into my paper tub just because they looked important. Turns out, a lot of things that look important aren’t actually important. Or maybe they’re important enough to look at, but not important enough to keep. Now, I find that out of 7 pieces of mail, I can usually get rid of 6! And often all 7! With definite (though broad) categories, I’m eliminating so much more paper. (Here’s my affiliate link to the vertical filing system.)   The experience and confidence I gained made it easier to purge old paper piles. After about six weeks of dealing with incoming mail and gaining confidence that it really was possible to put everything that came into the house into one of those categories, I started giving my tub full of old paper the side-eye. I wanted it gone. Not that I was perky or giddy about dealing with it. I didn’t want to spend my Saturday morning purging paper, but it was bugging me more and more. I got started by giving myself permission to do the easy stuff first. I would aim to reduce the pile by going through it, only worrying about getting rid of super-obvious trash. This achieves two things. Fist, it reduces the size of the pile which reduces the feeling of being overwhelmed. Second, it makes me look. As I go through the pile, I see what’s in it. Just knowing (instead of imagining that everything is painfully important) helps me feel ready to tackle the harder stuff in the pile sooner. But when I started non-commitally going through the pile of old paper, I shocked myself by finishing. Completely. I found that my experience with the simple organizing system made it easy to file or purge everything in the pile. Setting up a system for incoming paper helped me purge old paper. Really! Honesty Moment At first, I didn’t like how the hanging wall files looked. I preferred my plain, boring, empty wall, and it took me some time to get used to seeing them. I added the blue file folders and that made it look better and stay a little neater than when it was just paper in the black wire thingies. But I learned to be okay with it because I LOVED seeing the clear counter just inside my kitchen where a tub full of paper was for  years. I’ll take a hidden wall (it’s behind the door of my bedroom) any day over that open-to-the-public eyesore spot in the kitchen. The Take Your House Back course is SO HELPFUL! Take Your House Back is open for registration through September 15th! I have absolutely loved hearing from so many people about how this course has changed their homes. And I’ve learned, too! I’m sharing screenshots below of compliments on the course on a recent video. I think that first one covers all the bases! And the second image shows the responses to that comment from others in the course! Go to TakeYourHouseBack.com to sign up!   As promised, here are other posts about paper from the past. The focus here is on REDUCING paper, and there’s a lot of value in that! This system was so much easier to implement because I’d already reduced so much paper in our home! If you can’t even imagine three categories or three files for your paper, focus on reducing paper for now. I know you’re overwhelmed, and I understand. These links are for you:   How to Reduce Paper Clutter The Thing About Paper Piles 022 Reducing Paper Clutter Podcast Break Decluttering Paralysis (Even Paper)   Related Posts: !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments);if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n; n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script','//connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '1712009765708377'); fbq('track', "PageView");(function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.8&appId=593275940768565"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Source link

[angusstory]

  Welcome to the post I thought I’d never write. When people asked me how to solve paper clutter problems and implement a paper organization system, I would grimace (and grunt a little) and say I couldn’t help them. I’d share how I had reduced paper clutter so it no longer caused me significant angst (just minimal annoyance) by decluttering and putting a few habits into place. But solve it? No. Now, I have a solution. I set up this system based on advice from my lovely co-instructors in the Take Your House Back course: Dawn (of The Minimal Mom) and Cas (of Clutterbug and host of HGTV’s Hot Mess House). They’re the ones I learned from, and they give a lot more detail about organizing paper and ideas to adjust for your unique personality and home. I’ve been using this paper organizing system for about four months now. I’ll keep you updated on how it continues to work (or not) as time goes on, but this system has worked better for me than anything else I’ve tried. Note for the overwhelmed: If thinking about all the paper clutter in your home wakes you up at night, take a deep breath. At the end of this post, I link to my advice for reducing paper clutter and how to break through the feeling of being completely overwhelmed. I set up a system for dealing with incoming paper BEFORE I got existing paper piles under control. I really believe this advice from Dawn was the biggest game-changer for me. Paper is going to keep coming. It always keeps coming, and that’s what makes it so maddening. Paper . . . never . . . stops. But just like doing the dishes consistently made a bigger and more lasting impact on my home than spending one weekend a month frantically cleaning, going ahead and dealing with incoming mail before I’d dealt with the backlog of paper had a huge impact. Dealing with what came in for one day wasn’t intimidating.  Dealing with each day’s mail in this new system gave me confidence that the system worked and that gave me confidence in myself that I could maintain this system. I stuck to a few broad categories. Cas recommends sticking to broad categories when filing paper, and she calls this a “less organized approach.” Y’all know that’s right up my alley. The general idea is that an organization system for paper is more practical and maintainable if you keep it simple. I chose to use three categories for filing paper: To Do, Wait and See, and 2021. They’re pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll explain anyway. The To Do file is for anything that requires an action.  (I believe Dawn calls hers an Action File.) I put driver’s license renewal letters, car- registration stuff, bills to pay (that aren’t able to be completely switched to online notices), and such in that file. I stuck graduation announcements in the To Do file until I bought gifts and sent them. In previous years, I’d stacked the announcements in a “good” spot, but the piles morphed and grew and gathered unrelated stuff until finding them was a hassle and I worried I’d missed one. The Wait and See file is for things that don’t require an action, but that I might need later. I put coupons (for specific things, not just the whole coupon insert) in there, the card for the tree-trimmer guy, etc. The 2021 file is for anything that is important for this year such as home maintenance records and anything we need to keep for taxes. (Like the donation receipt from our Suburban!) We already had an established spot (where we’d look first) for the big important stuff like social security cards and birth certificates and driver’s ed certificates. That spot works, so we’re keeping it.   I set up a vertical filing system for organizing paper. Cas gives organizing strategies based on the personality of the person she’s helping. She said I needed to focus on vertical storage for paper, so I bought the filing system that nails to the wall. I was skeptical based on very-long-ago experiences trying systems like this. I realize now that my skepticism/fear-of-failure was based on the fact that I’d tried systems like this before I understood what I now call the Container Concept. When I didn’t understand that Containers are meant to serve as limits, I kept on piling. Shoving. Overfilling. So the memories I had of these kinds of organizing solutions was of papers sticking up and out and files full to bursting. Or falling off the wall. Because I didn’t know that the problem was that I was trying to keep too much, I decided there was something wrong with the system and went back to piles. The vertical system works for me because it’s nailed to the wall. It’s immovable. Unshiftable. As someone who doesn’t see incremental mess, I could set up a nifty horizontal system, but wouldn’t notice it again until it had fallen over and morphed into a surface-covering pile. And the finite space (contain-ers) for three categories that are supposed to cover all the paper that enters my home makes me level up my existing paper-clutter-reducing strategies. I already took the mail straight to the trash can/recycling bin. For years, that has been my number one way to avoid paper piling up in my home. Out of 7 pieces of mail, usually at least 5 are trash. Now, though, because I have to decide on a definite category for each piece of paper I keep, I find myself opening up important-looking envelopes that I used to stick into my paper tub just because they looked important. Turns out, a lot of things that look important aren’t actually important. Or maybe they’re important enough to look at, but not important enough to keep. Now, I find that out of 7 pieces of mail, I can usually get rid of 6! And often all 7! With definite (though broad) categories, I’m eliminating so much more paper. (Here’s my affiliate link to the vertical filing system.)   The experience and confidence I gained made it easier to purge old paper piles. After about six weeks of dealing with incoming mail and gaining confidence that it really was possible to put everything that came into the house into one of those categories, I started giving my tub full of old paper the side-eye. I wanted it gone. Not that I was perky or giddy about dealing with it. I didn’t want to spend my Saturday morning purging paper, but it was bugging me more and more. I got started by giving myself permission to do the easy stuff first. I would aim to reduce the pile by going through it, only worrying about getting rid of super-obvious trash. This achieves two things. Fist, it reduces the size of the pile which reduces the feeling of being overwhelmed. Second, it makes me look. As I go through the pile, I see what’s in it. Just knowing (instead of imagining that everything is painfully important) helps me feel ready to tackle the harder stuff in the pile sooner. But when I started non-commitally going through the pile of old paper, I shocked myself by finishing. Completely. I found that my experience with the simple organizing system made it easy to file or purge everything in the pile. Setting up a system for incoming paper helped me purge old paper. Really! Honesty Moment At first, I didn’t like how the hanging wall files looked. I preferred my plain, boring, empty wall, and it took me some time to get used to seeing them. I added the blue file folders and that made it look better and stay a little neater than when it was just paper in the black wire thingies. But I learned to be okay with it because I LOVED seeing the clear counter just inside my kitchen where a tub full of paper was for  years. I’ll take a hidden wall (it’s behind the door of my bedroom) any day over that open-to-the-public eyesore spot in the kitchen. The Take Your House Back course is SO HELPFUL! Take Your House Back is open for registration through September 15th! I have absolutely loved hearing from so many people about how this course has changed their homes. And I’ve learned, too! I’m sharing screenshots below of compliments on the course on a recent video. I think that first one covers all the bases! And the second image shows the responses to that comment from others in the course! Go to TakeYourHouseBack.com to sign up!   As promised, here are other posts about paper from the past. The focus here is on REDUCING paper, and there’s a lot of value in that! This system was so much easier to implement because I’d already reduced so much paper in our home! If you can’t even imagine three categories or three files for your paper, focus on reducing paper for now. I know you’re overwhelmed, and I understand. These links are for you:   How to Reduce Paper Clutter The Thing About Paper Piles 022 Reducing Paper Clutter Podcast Break Decluttering Paralysis (Even Paper)   Related Posts: !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments);if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n; n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script','//connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '1712009765708377'); fbq('track', "PageView");(function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.8&appId=593275940768565"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Source link

[tumibaba]

  Welcome to the post I thought I’d never write. When people asked me how to solve paper clutter problems and implement a paper organization system, I would grimace (and grunt a little) and say I couldn’t help them. I’d share how I had reduced paper clutter so it no longer caused me significant angst (just minimal annoyance) by decluttering and putting a few habits into place. But solve it? No. Now, I have a solution. I set up this system based on advice from my lovely co-instructors in the Take Your House Back course: Dawn (of The Minimal Mom) and Cas (of Clutterbug and host of HGTV’s Hot Mess House). They’re the ones I learned from, and they give a lot more detail about organizing paper and ideas to adjust for your unique personality and home. I’ve been using this paper organizing system for about four months now. I’ll keep you updated on how it continues to work (or not) as time goes on, but this system has worked better for me than anything else I’ve tried. Note for the overwhelmed: If thinking about all the paper clutter in your home wakes you up at night, take a deep breath. At the end of this post, I link to my advice for reducing paper clutter and how to break through the feeling of being completely overwhelmed. I set up a system for dealing with incoming paper BEFORE I got existing paper piles under control. I really believe this advice from Dawn was the biggest game-changer for me. Paper is going to keep coming. It always keeps coming, and that’s what makes it so maddening. Paper . . . never . . . stops. But just like doing the dishes consistently made a bigger and more lasting impact on my home than spending one weekend a month frantically cleaning, going ahead and dealing with incoming mail before I’d dealt with the backlog of paper had a huge impact. Dealing with what came in for one day wasn’t intimidating.  Dealing with each day’s mail in this new system gave me confidence that the system worked and that gave me confidence in myself that I could maintain this system. I stuck to a few broad categories. Cas recommends sticking to broad categories when filing paper, and she calls this a “less organized approach.” Y’all know that’s right up my alley. The general idea is that an organization system for paper is more practical and maintainable if you keep it simple. I chose to use three categories for filing paper: To Do, Wait and See, and 2021. They’re pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll explain anyway. The To Do file is for anything that requires an action.  (I believe Dawn calls hers an Action File.) I put driver’s license renewal letters, car- registration stuff, bills to pay (that aren’t able to be completely switched to online notices), and such in that file. I stuck graduation announcements in the To Do file until I bought gifts and sent them. In previous years, I’d stacked the announcements in a “good” spot, but the piles morphed and grew and gathered unrelated stuff until finding them was a hassle and I worried I’d missed one. The Wait and See file is for things that don’t require an action, but that I might need later. I put coupons (for specific things, not just the whole coupon insert) in there, the card for the tree-trimmer guy, etc. The 2021 file is for anything that is important for this year such as home maintenance records and anything we need to keep for taxes. (Like the donation receipt from our Suburban!) We already had an established spot (where we’d look first) for the big important stuff like social security cards and birth certificates and driver’s ed certificates. That spot works, so we’re keeping it.   I set up a vertical filing system for organizing paper. Cas gives organizing strategies based on the personality of the person she’s helping. She said I needed to focus on vertical storage for paper, so I bought the filing system that nails to the wall. I was skeptical based on very-long-ago experiences trying systems like this. I realize now that my skepticism/fear-of-failure was based on the fact that I’d tried systems like this before I understood what I now call the Container Concept. When I didn’t understand that Containers are meant to serve as limits, I kept on piling. Shoving. Overfilling. So the memories I had of these kinds of organizing solutions was of papers sticking up and out and files full to bursting. Or falling off the wall. Because I didn’t know that the problem was that I was trying to keep too much, I decided there was something wrong with the system and went back to piles. The vertical system works for me because it’s nailed to the wall. It’s immovable. Unshiftable. As someone who doesn’t see incremental mess, I could set up a nifty horizontal system, but wouldn’t notice it again until it had fallen over and morphed into a surface-covering pile. And the finite space (contain-ers) for three categories that are supposed to cover all the paper that enters my home makes me level up my existing paper-clutter-reducing strategies. I already took the mail straight to the trash can/recycling bin. For years, that has been my number one way to avoid paper piling up in my home. Out of 7 pieces of mail, usually at least 5 are trash. Now, though, because I have to decide on a definite category for each piece of paper I keep, I find myself opening up important-looking envelopes that I used to stick into my paper tub just because they looked important. Turns out, a lot of things that look important aren’t actually important. Or maybe they’re important enough to look at, but not important enough to keep. Now, I find that out of 7 pieces of mail, I can usually get rid of 6! And often all 7! With definite (though broad) categories, I’m eliminating so much more paper. (Here’s my affiliate link to the vertical filing system.)   The experience and confidence I gained made it easier to purge old paper piles. After about six weeks of dealing with incoming mail and gaining confidence that it really was possible to put everything that came into the house into one of those categories, I started giving my tub full of old paper the side-eye. I wanted it gone. Not that I was perky or giddy about dealing with it. I didn’t want to spend my Saturday morning purging paper, but it was bugging me more and more. I got started by giving myself permission to do the easy stuff first. I would aim to reduce the pile by going through it, only worrying about getting rid of super-obvious trash. This achieves two things. Fist, it reduces the size of the pile which reduces the feeling of being overwhelmed. Second, it makes me look. As I go through the pile, I see what’s in it. Just knowing (instead of imagining that everything is painfully important) helps me feel ready to tackle the harder stuff in the pile sooner. But when I started non-commitally going through the pile of old paper, I shocked myself by finishing. Completely. I found that my experience with the simple organizing system made it easy to file or purge everything in the pile. Setting up a system for incoming paper helped me purge old paper. Really! Honesty Moment At first, I didn’t like how the hanging wall files looked. I preferred my plain, boring, empty wall, and it took me some time to get used to seeing them. I added the blue file folders and that made it look better and stay a little neater than when it was just paper in the black wire thingies. But I learned to be okay with it because I LOVED seeing the clear counter just inside my kitchen where a tub full of paper was for  years. I’ll take a hidden wall (it’s behind the door of my bedroom) any day over that open-to-the-public eyesore spot in the kitchen. The Take Your House Back course is SO HELPFUL! Take Your House Back is open for registration through September 15th! I have absolutely loved hearing from so many people about how this course has changed their homes. And I’ve learned, too! I’m sharing screenshots below of compliments on the course on a recent video. I think that first one covers all the bases! And the second image shows the responses to that comment from others in the course! Go to TakeYourHouseBack.com to sign up!   As promised, here are other posts about paper from the past. The focus here is on REDUCING paper, and there’s a lot of value in that! This system was so much easier to implement because I’d already reduced so much paper in our home! If you can’t even imagine three categories or three files for your paper, focus on reducing paper for now. I know you’re overwhelmed, and I understand. These links are for you:   How to Reduce Paper Clutter The Thing About Paper Piles 022 Reducing Paper Clutter Podcast Break Decluttering Paralysis (Even Paper)   Related Posts: !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments);if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n; n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script','//connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '1712009765708377'); fbq('track', "PageView");(function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.8&appId=593275940768565"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Source link

[romaleen]

  Welcome to the post I thought I’d never write. When people asked me how to solve paper clutter problems and implement a paper organization system, I would grimace (and grunt a little) and say I couldn’t help them. I’d share how I had reduced paper clutter so it no longer caused me significant angst (just minimal annoyance) by decluttering and putting a few habits into place. But solve it? No. Now, I have a solution. I set up this system based on advice from my lovely co-instructors in the Take Your House Back course: Dawn (of The Minimal Mom) and Cas (of Clutterbug and host of HGTV’s Hot Mess House). They’re the ones I learned from, and they give a lot more detail about organizing paper and ideas to adjust for your unique personality and home. I’ve been using this paper organizing system for about four months now. I’ll keep you updated on how it continues to work (or not) as time goes on, but this system has worked better for me than anything else I’ve tried. Note for the overwhelmed: If thinking about all the paper clutter in your home wakes you up at night, take a deep breath. At the end of this post, I link to my advice for reducing paper clutter and how to break through the feeling of being completely overwhelmed. I set up a system for dealing with incoming paper BEFORE I got existing paper piles under control. I really believe this advice from Dawn was the biggest game-changer for me. Paper is going to keep coming. It always keeps coming, and that’s what makes it so maddening. Paper . . . never . . . stops. But just like doing the dishes consistently made a bigger and more lasting impact on my home than spending one weekend a month frantically cleaning, going ahead and dealing with incoming mail before I’d dealt with the backlog of paper had a huge impact. Dealing with what came in for one day wasn’t intimidating.  Dealing with each day’s mail in this new system gave me confidence that the system worked and that gave me confidence in myself that I could maintain this system. I stuck to a few broad categories. Cas recommends sticking to broad categories when filing paper, and she calls this a “less organized approach.” Y’all know that’s right up my alley. The general idea is that an organization system for paper is more practical and maintainable if you keep it simple. I chose to use three categories for filing paper: To Do, Wait and See, and 2021. They’re pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll explain anyway. The To Do file is for anything that requires an action.  (I believe Dawn calls hers an Action File.) I put driver’s license renewal letters, car- registration stuff, bills to pay (that aren’t able to be completely switched to online notices), and such in that file. I stuck graduation announcements in the To Do file until I bought gifts and sent them. In previous years, I’d stacked the announcements in a “good” spot, but the piles morphed and grew and gathered unrelated stuff until finding them was a hassle and I worried I’d missed one. The Wait and See file is for things that don’t require an action, but that I might need later. I put coupons (for specific things, not just the whole coupon insert) in there, the card for the tree-trimmer guy, etc. The 2021 file is for anything that is important for this year such as home maintenance records and anything we need to keep for taxes. (Like the donation receipt from our Suburban!) We already had an established spot (where we’d look first) for the big important stuff like social security cards and birth certificates and driver’s ed certificates. That spot works, so we’re keeping it.   I set up a vertical filing system for organizing paper. Cas gives organizing strategies based on the personality of the person she’s helping. She said I needed to focus on vertical storage for paper, so I bought the filing system that nails to the wall. I was skeptical based on very-long-ago experiences trying systems like this. I realize now that my skepticism/fear-of-failure was based on the fact that I’d tried systems like this before I understood what I now call the Container Concept. When I didn’t understand that Containers are meant to serve as limits, I kept on piling. Shoving. Overfilling. So the memories I had of these kinds of organizing solutions was of papers sticking up and out and files full to bursting. Or falling off the wall. Because I didn’t know that the problem was that I was trying to keep too much, I decided there was something wrong with the system and went back to piles. The vertical system works for me because it’s nailed to the wall. It’s immovable. Unshiftable. As someone who doesn’t see incremental mess, I could set up a nifty horizontal system, but wouldn’t notice it again until it had fallen over and morphed into a surface-covering pile. And the finite space (contain-ers) for three categories that are supposed to cover all the paper that enters my home makes me level up my existing paper-clutter-reducing strategies. I already took the mail straight to the trash can/recycling bin. For years, that has been my number one way to avoid paper piling up in my home. Out of 7 pieces of mail, usually at least 5 are trash. Now, though, because I have to decide on a definite category for each piece of paper I keep, I find myself opening up important-looking envelopes that I used to stick into my paper tub just because they looked important. Turns out, a lot of things that look important aren’t actually important. Or maybe they’re important enough to look at, but not important enough to keep. Now, I find that out of 7 pieces of mail, I can usually get rid of 6! And often all 7! With definite (though broad) categories, I’m eliminating so much more paper. (Here’s my affiliate link to the vertical filing system.)   The experience and confidence I gained made it easier to purge old paper piles. After about six weeks of dealing with incoming mail and gaining confidence that it really was possible to put everything that came into the house into one of those categories, I started giving my tub full of old paper the side-eye. I wanted it gone. Not that I was perky or giddy about dealing with it. I didn’t want to spend my Saturday morning purging paper, but it was bugging me more and more. I got started by giving myself permission to do the easy stuff first. I would aim to reduce the pile by going through it, only worrying about getting rid of super-obvious trash. This achieves two things. Fist, it reduces the size of the pile which reduces the feeling of being overwhelmed. Second, it makes me look. As I go through the pile, I see what’s in it. Just knowing (instead of imagining that everything is painfully important) helps me feel ready to tackle the harder stuff in the pile sooner. But when I started non-commitally going through the pile of old paper, I shocked myself by finishing. Completely. I found that my experience with the simple organizing system made it easy to file or purge everything in the pile. Setting up a system for incoming paper helped me purge old paper. Really! Honesty Moment At first, I didn’t like how the hanging wall files looked. I preferred my plain, boring, empty wall, and it took me some time to get used to seeing them. I added the blue file folders and that made it look better and stay a little neater than when it was just paper in the black wire thingies. But I learned to be okay with it because I LOVED seeing the clear counter just inside my kitchen where a tub full of paper was for  years. I’ll take a hidden wall (it’s behind the door of my bedroom) any day over that open-to-the-public eyesore spot in the kitchen. The Take Your House Back course is SO HELPFUL! Take Your House Back is open for registration through September 15th! I have absolutely loved hearing from so many people about how this course has changed their homes. And I’ve learned, too! I’m sharing screenshots below of compliments on the course on a recent video. I think that first one covers all the bases! And the second image shows the responses to that comment from others in the course! Go to TakeYourHouseBack.com to sign up!   As promised, here are other posts about paper from the past. The focus here is on REDUCING paper, and there’s a lot of value in that! This system was so much easier to implement because I’d already reduced so much paper in our home! If you can’t even imagine three categories or three files for your paper, focus on reducing paper for now. I know you’re overwhelmed, and I understand. These links are for you:   How to Reduce Paper Clutter The Thing About Paper Piles 022 Reducing Paper Clutter Podcast Break Decluttering Paralysis (Even Paper)   Related Posts: !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments);if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n; n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script','//connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '1712009765708377'); fbq('track', "PageView");(function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.8&appId=593275940768565"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Source link

[monaleen101]

  Welcome to the post I thought I’d never write. When people asked me how to solve paper clutter problems and implement a paper organization system, I would grimace (and grunt a little) and say I couldn’t help them. I’d share how I had reduced paper clutter so it no longer caused me significant angst (just minimal annoyance) by decluttering and putting a few habits into place. But solve it? No. Now, I have a solution. I set up this system based on advice from my lovely co-instructors in the Take Your House Back course: Dawn (of The Minimal Mom) and Cas (of Clutterbug and host of HGTV’s Hot Mess House). They’re the ones I learned from, and they give a lot more detail about organizing paper and ideas to adjust for your unique personality and home. I’ve been using this paper organizing system for about four months now. I’ll keep you updated on how it continues to work (or not) as time goes on, but this system has worked better for me than anything else I’ve tried. Note for the overwhelmed: If thinking about all the paper clutter in your home wakes you up at night, take a deep breath. At the end of this post, I link to my advice for reducing paper clutter and how to break through the feeling of being completely overwhelmed. I set up a system for dealing with incoming paper BEFORE I got existing paper piles under control. I really believe this advice from Dawn was the biggest game-changer for me. Paper is going to keep coming. It always keeps coming, and that’s what makes it so maddening. Paper . . . never . . . stops. But just like doing the dishes consistently made a bigger and more lasting impact on my home than spending one weekend a month frantically cleaning, going ahead and dealing with incoming mail before I’d dealt with the backlog of paper had a huge impact. Dealing with what came in for one day wasn’t intimidating.  Dealing with each day’s mail in this new system gave me confidence that the system worked and that gave me confidence in myself that I could maintain this system. I stuck to a few broad categories. Cas recommends sticking to broad categories when filing paper, and she calls this a “less organized approach.” Y’all know that’s right up my alley. The general idea is that an organization system for paper is more practical and maintainable if you keep it simple. I chose to use three categories for filing paper: To Do, Wait and See, and 2021. They’re pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll explain anyway. The To Do file is for anything that requires an action.  (I believe Dawn calls hers an Action File.) I put driver’s license renewal letters, car- registration stuff, bills to pay (that aren’t able to be completely switched to online notices), and such in that file. I stuck graduation announcements in the To Do file until I bought gifts and sent them. In previous years, I’d stacked the announcements in a “good” spot, but the piles morphed and grew and gathered unrelated stuff until finding them was a hassle and I worried I’d missed one. The Wait and See file is for things that don’t require an action, but that I might need later. I put coupons (for specific things, not just the whole coupon insert) in there, the card for the tree-trimmer guy, etc. The 2021 file is for anything that is important for this year such as home maintenance records and anything we need to keep for taxes. (Like the donation receipt from our Suburban!) We already had an established spot (where we’d look first) for the big important stuff like social security cards and birth certificates and driver’s ed certificates. That spot works, so we’re keeping it.   I set up a vertical filing system for organizing paper. Cas gives organizing strategies based on the personality of the person she’s helping. She said I needed to focus on vertical storage for paper, so I bought the filing system that nails to the wall. I was skeptical based on very-long-ago experiences trying systems like this. I realize now that my skepticism/fear-of-failure was based on the fact that I’d tried systems like this before I understood what I now call the Container Concept. When I didn’t understand that Containers are meant to serve as limits, I kept on piling. Shoving. Overfilling. So the memories I had of these kinds of organizing solutions was of papers sticking up and out and files full to bursting. Or falling off the wall. Because I didn’t know that the problem was that I was trying to keep too much, I decided there was something wrong with the system and went back to piles. The vertical system works for me because it’s nailed to the wall. It’s immovable. Unshiftable. As someone who doesn’t see incremental mess, I could set up a nifty horizontal system, but wouldn’t notice it again until it had fallen over and morphed into a surface-covering pile. And the finite space (contain-ers) for three categories that are supposed to cover all the paper that enters my home makes me level up my existing paper-clutter-reducing strategies. I already took the mail straight to the trash can/recycling bin. For years, that has been my number one way to avoid paper piling up in my home. Out of 7 pieces of mail, usually at least 5 are trash. Now, though, because I have to decide on a definite category for each piece of paper I keep, I find myself opening up important-looking envelopes that I used to stick into my paper tub just because they looked important. Turns out, a lot of things that look important aren’t actually important. Or maybe they’re important enough to look at, but not important enough to keep. Now, I find that out of 7 pieces of mail, I can usually get rid of 6! And often all 7! With definite (though broad) categories, I’m eliminating so much more paper. (Here’s my affiliate link to the vertical filing system.)   The experience and confidence I gained made it easier to purge old paper piles. After about six weeks of dealing with incoming mail and gaining confidence that it really was possible to put everything that came into the house into one of those categories, I started giving my tub full of old paper the side-eye. I wanted it gone. Not that I was perky or giddy about dealing with it. I didn’t want to spend my Saturday morning purging paper, but it was bugging me more and more. I got started by giving myself permission to do the easy stuff first. I would aim to reduce the pile by going through it, only worrying about getting rid of super-obvious trash. This achieves two things. Fist, it reduces the size of the pile which reduces the feeling of being overwhelmed. Second, it makes me look. As I go through the pile, I see what’s in it. Just knowing (instead of imagining that everything is painfully important) helps me feel ready to tackle the harder stuff in the pile sooner. But when I started non-commitally going through the pile of old paper, I shocked myself by finishing. Completely. I found that my experience with the simple organizing system made it easy to file or purge everything in the pile. Setting up a system for incoming paper helped me purge old paper. Really! Honesty Moment At first, I didn’t like how the hanging wall files looked. I preferred my plain, boring, empty wall, and it took me some time to get used to seeing them. I added the blue file folders and that made it look better and stay a little neater than when it was just paper in the black wire thingies. But I learned to be okay with it because I LOVED seeing the clear counter just inside my kitchen where a tub full of paper was for  years. I’ll take a hidden wall (it’s behind the door of my bedroom) any day over that open-to-the-public eyesore spot in the kitchen. The Take Your House Back course is SO HELPFUL! Take Your House Back is open for registration through September 15th! I have absolutely loved hearing from so many people about how this course has changed their homes. And I’ve learned, too! I’m sharing screenshots below of compliments on the course on a recent video. I think that first one covers all the bases! And the second image shows the responses to that comment from others in the course! Go to TakeYourHouseBack.com to sign up!   As promised, here are other posts about paper from the past. The focus here is on REDUCING paper, and there’s a lot of value in that! This system was so much easier to implement because I’d already reduced so much paper in our home! If you can’t even imagine three categories or three files for your paper, focus on reducing paper for now. I know you’re overwhelmed, and I understand. These links are for you:   How to Reduce Paper Clutter The Thing About Paper Piles 022 Reducing Paper Clutter Podcast Break Decluttering Paralysis (Even Paper)   Related Posts: !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments);if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n; n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script','//connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '1712009765708377'); fbq('track', "PageView");(function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.8&appId=593275940768565"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Source link

[iamownerofme]

  Welcome to the post I thought I’d never write. When people asked me how to solve paper clutter problems and implement a paper organization system, I would grimace (and grunt a little) and say I couldn’t help them. I’d share how I had reduced paper clutter so it no longer caused me significant angst (just minimal annoyance) by decluttering and putting a few habits into place. But solve it? No. Now, I have a solution. I set up this system based on advice from my lovely co-instructors in the Take Your House Back course: Dawn (of The Minimal Mom) and Cas (of Clutterbug and host of HGTV’s Hot Mess House). They’re the ones I learned from, and they give a lot more detail about organizing paper and ideas to adjust for your unique personality and home. I’ve been using this paper organizing system for about four months now. I’ll keep you updated on how it continues to work (or not) as time goes on, but this system has worked better for me than anything else I’ve tried. Note for the overwhelmed: If thinking about all the paper clutter in your home wakes you up at night, take a deep breath. At the end of this post, I link to my advice for reducing paper clutter and how to break through the feeling of being completely overwhelmed. I set up a system for dealing with incoming paper BEFORE I got existing paper piles under control. I really believe this advice from Dawn was the biggest game-changer for me. Paper is going to keep coming. It always keeps coming, and that’s what makes it so maddening. Paper . . . never . . . stops. But just like doing the dishes consistently made a bigger and more lasting impact on my home than spending one weekend a month frantically cleaning, going ahead and dealing with incoming mail before I’d dealt with the backlog of paper had a huge impact. Dealing with what came in for one day wasn’t intimidating.  Dealing with each day’s mail in this new system gave me confidence that the system worked and that gave me confidence in myself that I could maintain this system. I stuck to a few broad categories. Cas recommends sticking to broad categories when filing paper, and she calls this a “less organized approach.” Y’all know that’s right up my alley. The general idea is that an organization system for paper is more practical and maintainable if you keep it simple. I chose to use three categories for filing paper: To Do, Wait and See, and 2021. They’re pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll explain anyway. The To Do file is for anything that requires an action.  (I believe Dawn calls hers an Action File.) I put driver’s license renewal letters, car- registration stuff, bills to pay (that aren’t able to be completely switched to online notices), and such in that file. I stuck graduation announcements in the To Do file until I bought gifts and sent them. In previous years, I’d stacked the announcements in a “good” spot, but the piles morphed and grew and gathered unrelated stuff until finding them was a hassle and I worried I’d missed one. The Wait and See file is for things that don’t require an action, but that I might need later. I put coupons (for specific things, not just the whole coupon insert) in there, the card for the tree-trimmer guy, etc. The 2021 file is for anything that is important for this year such as home maintenance records and anything we need to keep for taxes. (Like the donation receipt from our Suburban!) We already had an established spot (where we’d look first) for the big important stuff like social security cards and birth certificates and driver’s ed certificates. That spot works, so we’re keeping it.   I set up a vertical filing system for organizing paper. Cas gives organizing strategies based on the personality of the person she’s helping. She said I needed to focus on vertical storage for paper, so I bought the filing system that nails to the wall. I was skeptical based on very-long-ago experiences trying systems like this. I realize now that my skepticism/fear-of-failure was based on the fact that I’d tried systems like this before I understood what I now call the Container Concept. When I didn’t understand that Containers are meant to serve as limits, I kept on piling. Shoving. Overfilling. So the memories I had of these kinds of organizing solutions was of papers sticking up and out and files full to bursting. Or falling off the wall. Because I didn’t know that the problem was that I was trying to keep too much, I decided there was something wrong with the system and went back to piles. The vertical system works for me because it’s nailed to the wall. It’s immovable. Unshiftable. As someone who doesn’t see incremental mess, I could set up a nifty horizontal system, but wouldn’t notice it again until it had fallen over and morphed into a surface-covering pile. And the finite space (contain-ers) for three categories that are supposed to cover all the paper that enters my home makes me level up my existing paper-clutter-reducing strategies. I already took the mail straight to the trash can/recycling bin. For years, that has been my number one way to avoid paper piling up in my home. Out of 7 pieces of mail, usually at least 5 are trash. Now, though, because I have to decide on a definite category for each piece of paper I keep, I find myself opening up important-looking envelopes that I used to stick into my paper tub just because they looked important. Turns out, a lot of things that look important aren’t actually important. Or maybe they’re important enough to look at, but not important enough to keep. Now, I find that out of 7 pieces of mail, I can usually get rid of 6! And often all 7! With definite (though broad) categories, I’m eliminating so much more paper. (Here’s my affiliate link to the vertical filing system.)   The experience and confidence I gained made it easier to purge old paper piles. After about six weeks of dealing with incoming mail and gaining confidence that it really was possible to put everything that came into the house into one of those categories, I started giving my tub full of old paper the side-eye. I wanted it gone. Not that I was perky or giddy about dealing with it. I didn’t want to spend my Saturday morning purging paper, but it was bugging me more and more. I got started by giving myself permission to do the easy stuff first. I would aim to reduce the pile by going through it, only worrying about getting rid of super-obvious trash. This achieves two things. Fist, it reduces the size of the pile which reduces the feeling of being overwhelmed. Second, it makes me look. As I go through the pile, I see what’s in it. Just knowing (instead of imagining that everything is painfully important) helps me feel ready to tackle the harder stuff in the pile sooner. But when I started non-commitally going through the pile of old paper, I shocked myself by finishing. Completely. I found that my experience with the simple organizing system made it easy to file or purge everything in the pile. Setting up a system for incoming paper helped me purge old paper. Really! Honesty Moment At first, I didn’t like how the hanging wall files looked. I preferred my plain, boring, empty wall, and it took me some time to get used to seeing them. I added the blue file folders and that made it look better and stay a little neater than when it was just paper in the black wire thingies. But I learned to be okay with it because I LOVED seeing the clear counter just inside my kitchen where a tub full of paper was for  years. I’ll take a hidden wall (it’s behind the door of my bedroom) any day over that open-to-the-public eyesore spot in the kitchen. The Take Your House Back course is SO HELPFUL! Take Your House Back is open for registration through September 15th! I have absolutely loved hearing from so many people about how this course has changed their homes. And I’ve learned, too! I’m sharing screenshots below of compliments on the course on a recent video. I think that first one covers all the bases! And the second image shows the responses to that comment from others in the course! Go to TakeYourHouseBack.com to sign up!   As promised, here are other posts about paper from the past. The focus here is on REDUCING paper, and there’s a lot of value in that! This system was so much easier to implement because I’d already reduced so much paper in our home! If you can’t even imagine three categories or three files for your paper, focus on reducing paper for now. I know you’re overwhelmed, and I understand. These links are for you:   How to Reduce Paper Clutter The Thing About Paper Piles 022 Reducing Paper Clutter Podcast Break Decluttering Paralysis (Even Paper)   Related Posts: !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments);if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n; n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script','//connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '1712009765708377'); fbq('track', "PageView");(function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.8&appId=593275940768565"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Source link

[shelyold]

  Welcome to the post I thought I’d never write. When people asked me how to solve paper clutter problems and implement a paper organization system, I would grimace (and grunt a little) and say I couldn’t help them. I’d share how I had reduced paper clutter so it no longer caused me significant angst (just minimal annoyance) by decluttering and putting a few habits into place. But solve it? No. Now, I have a solution. I set up this system based on advice from my lovely co-instructors in the Take Your House Back course: Dawn (of The Minimal Mom) and Cas (of Clutterbug and host of HGTV’s Hot Mess House). They’re the ones I learned from, and they give a lot more detail about organizing paper and ideas to adjust for your unique personality and home. I’ve been using this paper organizing system for about four months now. I’ll keep you updated on how it continues to work (or not) as time goes on, but this system has worked better for me than anything else I’ve tried. Note for the overwhelmed: If thinking about all the paper clutter in your home wakes you up at night, take a deep breath. At the end of this post, I link to my advice for reducing paper clutter and how to break through the feeling of being completely overwhelmed. I set up a system for dealing with incoming paper BEFORE I got existing paper piles under control. I really believe this advice from Dawn was the biggest game-changer for me. Paper is going to keep coming. It always keeps coming, and that’s what makes it so maddening. Paper . . . never . . . stops. But just like doing the dishes consistently made a bigger and more lasting impact on my home than spending one weekend a month frantically cleaning, going ahead and dealing with incoming mail before I’d dealt with the backlog of paper had a huge impact. Dealing with what came in for one day wasn’t intimidating.  Dealing with each day’s mail in this new system gave me confidence that the system worked and that gave me confidence in myself that I could maintain this system. I stuck to a few broad categories. Cas recommends sticking to broad categories when filing paper, and she calls this a “less organized approach.” Y’all know that’s right up my alley. The general idea is that an organization system for paper is more practical and maintainable if you keep it simple. I chose to use three categories for filing paper: To Do, Wait and See, and 2021. They’re pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll explain anyway. The To Do file is for anything that requires an action.  (I believe Dawn calls hers an Action File.) I put driver’s license renewal letters, car- registration stuff, bills to pay (that aren’t able to be completely switched to online notices), and such in that file. I stuck graduation announcements in the To Do file until I bought gifts and sent them. In previous years, I’d stacked the announcements in a “good” spot, but the piles morphed and grew and gathered unrelated stuff until finding them was a hassle and I worried I’d missed one. The Wait and See file is for things that don’t require an action, but that I might need later. I put coupons (for specific things, not just the whole coupon insert) in there, the card for the tree-trimmer guy, etc. The 2021 file is for anything that is important for this year such as home maintenance records and anything we need to keep for taxes. (Like the donation receipt from our Suburban!) We already had an established spot (where we’d look first) for the big important stuff like social security cards and birth certificates and driver’s ed certificates. That spot works, so we’re keeping it.   I set up a vertical filing system for organizing paper. Cas gives organizing strategies based on the personality of the person she’s helping. She said I needed to focus on vertical storage for paper, so I bought the filing system that nails to the wall. I was skeptical based on very-long-ago experiences trying systems like this. I realize now that my skepticism/fear-of-failure was based on the fact that I’d tried systems like this before I understood what I now call the Container Concept. When I didn’t understand that Containers are meant to serve as limits, I kept on piling. Shoving. Overfilling. So the memories I had of these kinds of organizing solutions was of papers sticking up and out and files full to bursting. Or falling off the wall. Because I didn’t know that the problem was that I was trying to keep too much, I decided there was something wrong with the system and went back to piles. The vertical system works for me because it’s nailed to the wall. It’s immovable. Unshiftable. As someone who doesn’t see incremental mess, I could set up a nifty horizontal system, but wouldn’t notice it again until it had fallen over and morphed into a surface-covering pile. And the finite space (contain-ers) for three categories that are supposed to cover all the paper that enters my home makes me level up my existing paper-clutter-reducing strategies. I already took the mail straight to the trash can/recycling bin. For years, that has been my number one way to avoid paper piling up in my home. Out of 7 pieces of mail, usually at least 5 are trash. Now, though, because I have to decide on a definite category for each piece of paper I keep, I find myself opening up important-looking envelopes that I used to stick into my paper tub just because they looked important. Turns out, a lot of things that look important aren’t actually important. Or maybe they’re important enough to look at, but not important enough to keep. Now, I find that out of 7 pieces of mail, I can usually get rid of 6! And often all 7! With definite (though broad) categories, I’m eliminating so much more paper. (Here’s my affiliate link to the vertical filing system.)   The experience and confidence I gained made it easier to purge old paper piles. After about six weeks of dealing with incoming mail and gaining confidence that it really was possible to put everything that came into the house into one of those categories, I started giving my tub full of old paper the side-eye. I wanted it gone. Not that I was perky or giddy about dealing with it. I didn’t want to spend my Saturday morning purging paper, but it was bugging me more and more. I got started by giving myself permission to do the easy stuff first. I would aim to reduce the pile by going through it, only worrying about getting rid of super-obvious trash. This achieves two things. Fist, it reduces the size of the pile which reduces the feeling of being overwhelmed. Second, it makes me look. As I go through the pile, I see what’s in it. Just knowing (instead of imagining that everything is painfully important) helps me feel ready to tackle the harder stuff in the pile sooner. But when I started non-commitally going through the pile of old paper, I shocked myself by finishing. Completely. I found that my experience with the simple organizing system made it easy to file or purge everything in the pile. Setting up a system for incoming paper helped me purge old paper. Really! Honesty Moment At first, I didn’t like how the hanging wall files looked. I preferred my plain, boring, empty wall, and it took me some time to get used to seeing them. I added the blue file folders and that made it look better and stay a little neater than when it was just paper in the black wire thingies. But I learned to be okay with it because I LOVED seeing the clear counter just inside my kitchen where a tub full of paper was for  years. I’ll take a hidden wall (it’s behind the door of my bedroom) any day over that open-to-the-public eyesore spot in the kitchen. The Take Your House Back course is SO HELPFUL! Take Your House Back is open for registration through September 15th! I have absolutely loved hearing from so many people about how this course has changed their homes. And I’ve learned, too! I’m sharing screenshots below of compliments on the course on a recent video. I think that first one covers all the bases! And the second image shows the responses to that comment from others in the course! Go to TakeYourHouseBack.com to sign up!   As promised, here are other posts about paper from the past. The focus here is on REDUCING paper, and there’s a lot of value in that! This system was so much easier to implement because I’d already reduced so much paper in our home! If you can’t even imagine three categories or three files for your paper, focus on reducing paper for now. I know you’re overwhelmed, and I understand. These links are for you:   How to Reduce Paper Clutter The Thing About Paper Piles 022 Reducing Paper Clutter Podcast Break Decluttering Paralysis (Even Paper)   Related Posts: !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments);if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n; n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script','//connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '1712009765708377'); fbq('track', "PageView");(function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.8&appId=593275940768565"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Source link

[iammeandmy]

  Welcome to the post I thought I’d never write. When people asked me how to solve paper clutter problems and implement a paper organization system, I would grimace (and grunt a little) and say I couldn’t help them. I’d share how I had reduced paper clutter so it no longer caused me significant angst (just minimal annoyance) by decluttering and putting a few habits into place. But solve it? No. Now, I have a solution. I set up this system based on advice from my lovely co-instructors in the Take Your House Back course: Dawn (of The Minimal Mom) and Cas (of Clutterbug and host of HGTV’s Hot Mess House). They’re the ones I learned from, and they give a lot more detail about organizing paper and ideas to adjust for your unique personality and home. I’ve been using this paper organizing system for about four months now. I’ll keep you updated on how it continues to work (or not) as time goes on, but this system has worked better for me than anything else I’ve tried. Note for the overwhelmed: If thinking about all the paper clutter in your home wakes you up at night, take a deep breath. At the end of this post, I link to my advice for reducing paper clutter and how to break through the feeling of being completely overwhelmed. I set up a system for dealing with incoming paper BEFORE I got existing paper piles under control. I really believe this advice from Dawn was the biggest game-changer for me. Paper is going to keep coming. It always keeps coming, and that’s what makes it so maddening. Paper . . . never . . . stops. But just like doing the dishes consistently made a bigger and more lasting impact on my home than spending one weekend a month frantically cleaning, going ahead and dealing with incoming mail before I’d dealt with the backlog of paper had a huge impact. Dealing with what came in for one day wasn’t intimidating.  Dealing with each day’s mail in this new system gave me confidence that the system worked and that gave me confidence in myself that I could maintain this system. I stuck to a few broad categories. Cas recommends sticking to broad categories when filing paper, and she calls this a “less organized approach.” Y’all know that’s right up my alley. The general idea is that an organization system for paper is more practical and maintainable if you keep it simple. I chose to use three categories for filing paper: To Do, Wait and See, and 2021. They’re pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll explain anyway. The To Do file is for anything that requires an action.  (I believe Dawn calls hers an Action File.) I put driver’s license renewal letters, car- registration stuff, bills to pay (that aren’t able to be completely switched to online notices), and such in that file. I stuck graduation announcements in the To Do file until I bought gifts and sent them. In previous years, I’d stacked the announcements in a “good” spot, but the piles morphed and grew and gathered unrelated stuff until finding them was a hassle and I worried I’d missed one. The Wait and See file is for things that don’t require an action, but that I might need later. I put coupons (for specific things, not just the whole coupon insert) in there, the card for the tree-trimmer guy, etc. The 2021 file is for anything that is important for this year such as home maintenance records and anything we need to keep for taxes. (Like the donation receipt from our Suburban!) We already had an established spot (where we’d look first) for the big important stuff like social security cards and birth certificates and driver’s ed certificates. That spot works, so we’re keeping it.   I set up a vertical filing system for organizing paper. Cas gives organizing strategies based on the personality of the person she’s helping. She said I needed to focus on vertical storage for paper, so I bought the filing system that nails to the wall. I was skeptical based on very-long-ago experiences trying systems like this. I realize now that my skepticism/fear-of-failure was based on the fact that I’d tried systems like this before I understood what I now call the Container Concept. When I didn’t understand that Containers are meant to serve as limits, I kept on piling. Shoving. Overfilling. So the memories I had of these kinds of organizing solutions was of papers sticking up and out and files full to bursting. Or falling off the wall. Because I didn’t know that the problem was that I was trying to keep too much, I decided there was something wrong with the system and went back to piles. The vertical system works for me because it’s nailed to the wall. It’s immovable. Unshiftable. As someone who doesn’t see incremental mess, I could set up a nifty horizontal system, but wouldn’t notice it again until it had fallen over and morphed into a surface-covering pile. And the finite space (contain-ers) for three categories that are supposed to cover all the paper that enters my home makes me level up my existing paper-clutter-reducing strategies. I already took the mail straight to the trash can/recycling bin. For years, that has been my number one way to avoid paper piling up in my home. Out of 7 pieces of mail, usually at least 5 are trash. Now, though, because I have to decide on a definite category for each piece of paper I keep, I find myself opening up important-looking envelopes that I used to stick into my paper tub just because they looked important. Turns out, a lot of things that look important aren’t actually important. Or maybe they’re important enough to look at, but not important enough to keep. Now, I find that out of 7 pieces of mail, I can usually get rid of 6! And often all 7! With definite (though broad) categories, I’m eliminating so much more paper. (Here’s my affiliate link to the vertical filing system.)   The experience and confidence I gained made it easier to purge old paper piles. After about six weeks of dealing with incoming mail and gaining confidence that it really was possible to put everything that came into the house into one of those categories, I started giving my tub full of old paper the side-eye. I wanted it gone. Not that I was perky or giddy about dealing with it. I didn’t want to spend my Saturday morning purging paper, but it was bugging me more and more. I got started by giving myself permission to do the easy stuff first. I would aim to reduce the pile by going through it, only worrying about getting rid of super-obvious trash. This achieves two things. Fist, it reduces the size of the pile which reduces the feeling of being overwhelmed. Second, it makes me look. As I go through the pile, I see what’s in it. Just knowing (instead of imagining that everything is painfully important) helps me feel ready to tackle the harder stuff in the pile sooner. But when I started non-commitally going through the pile of old paper, I shocked myself by finishing. Completely. I found that my experience with the simple organizing system made it easy to file or purge everything in the pile. Setting up a system for incoming paper helped me purge old paper. Really! Honesty Moment At first, I didn’t like how the hanging wall files looked. I preferred my plain, boring, empty wall, and it took me some time to get used to seeing them. I added the blue file folders and that made it look better and stay a little neater than when it was just paper in the black wire thingies. But I learned to be okay with it because I LOVED seeing the clear counter just inside my kitchen where a tub full of paper was for  years. I’ll take a hidden wall (it’s behind the door of my bedroom) any day over that open-to-the-public eyesore spot in the kitchen. The Take Your House Back course is SO HELPFUL! Take Your House Back is open for registration through September 15th! I have absolutely loved hearing from so many people about how this course has changed their homes. And I’ve learned, too! I’m sharing screenshots below of compliments on the course on a recent video. I think that first one covers all the bases! And the second image shows the responses to that comment from others in the course! Go to TakeYourHouseBack.com to sign up!   As promised, here are other posts about paper from the past. The focus here is on REDUCING paper, and there’s a lot of value in that! This system was so much easier to implement because I’d already reduced so much paper in our home! If you can’t even imagine three categories or three files for your paper, focus on reducing paper for now. I know you’re overwhelmed, and I understand. These links are for you:   How to Reduce Paper Clutter The Thing About Paper Piles 022 Reducing Paper Clutter Podcast Break Decluttering Paralysis (Even Paper)   Related Posts: !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments);if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n; n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script','//connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '1712009765708377'); fbq('track', "PageView");(function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.8&appId=593275940768565"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Source link