You most likely loved how many shelves your home had when you first moved in. With all good intentions, little did you realize the amount of clutter that would accumulate on those shelves. In fact, it may seem like the shelves have become a magnet for clutter seeming to attract things you did not even realize you owned. Even those items you wanted to showcase on the shelves now seem to be lost in the shuffle.

Of course, there are a couple of reasons for clutter, so first let’s think about why clutter accumulates.

• You don’t take time to put things away as you handle them;
• You’ll need the item again soon;
• The item doesn’t have a place or home of its own;
• You think that if you put things away, you would never be able to find them when you want or need them again (and of course, you’ll remember which stack you put it in, right?!);
• Magazines stack up because you want to read them, but don’t have time when they come in. Then before you know it, next months’ magazines are coming in!
• You probably have more reasons, as well.

But there is a solution with Paper Tiger Filing System Software for document management! You can now finally take the clutter off your shelves, create a home for each item, and enjoy the look of your shelves again, and be able to find them when you need them. Let your shelves return to being decorative, not just functional. Even if you want them functional, but more organized, you can still accomplish this as well.

Getting Organized Is Not a Magic Trick

It’s no magic trick or even that big a secret. The best way to declutter your home is to use Paper Tiger, which is an indexing system to help you get organized. Paper Tiger is not just for paper filing and document management!

You may be proud to have the biggest movie collection this side of Hollywood, but getting a little tired of it taking over your shelving space. Or maybe you have an extensive collection of DIY books you refer to often, but would rather not have them taking over all of your shelving space.

Whatever the items may be, you can still regain control of your home or office again. The best part isn’t about simply letting go of half of your collection to make it happen. It is, however, about creating a home for everything or packing these items up into storage bins. Don’t panic! You will still be able to find what you need by indexing the items into Paper Tiger’s system.

“A place for everything, everything in its place.”
Benjamin Franklin

How Paper Tiger Works for Getting Organized

Choose the items you know you need to have on hand that you use the most often, and organize them in a neat and attractive way on your shelves. The remaining items can be packed into bins or another appropriate place. Then in Paper Tiger’s database, you simply type item the name or description and keywords for the items that you’re organizing in each bin or box or other ‘home’. Later when you want to find a particular item, you can simply conduct a search based on the keywords you’ve entered into the database, and you’ll be able to find exactly which bin or box number to find it in.

This is especially handy if you are going to keep boxes stored in the garage, attic or an offsite storage facility. It is even more crucial to use Paper Tiger if you are going to have these boxes or bins located in multiple locations. By making a note of where each numbered box is stored, you will be able to find the item you are looking for, the bin number to find it in and where that bin is located.

So let’s say that you have magazines stacking up on your shelves. Decide if you’re going to keep all of them or some of them. Throw away or recycle what you’re not going to keep. For those that you want to keep for reading later, find a home for them. Depending on how many you will keep, you may want to file in a hanging file folder in your file cabinet. Then schedule time on your calendar to go through one or two at a time until you’re caught up. Think about cutting out the articles you want to keep on file instead of keeping the entire magazine. You can enter the article title and keywords and/or a description of the article into Paper Tiger’s database, then drop the article into the hanging file folder to match the item number in Paper Tiger.

How do you organize seasonal decorations when putting them away after a holiday? Give your decorations for each ‘season’ or ‘holiday’ a home of their own as in the example below.

Example:  Boxes of Seasonal Decorations

1. You can name a Location in Paper Tiger ‘Decorations’ and say you have 5 boxes of seasonal decoration, so your Location capacity would be 5. In the description for the Location, you can input where you will store your boxes of decorations, such as ‘Decorations are stored in Basement on 2^nd from top shelf of Shelf 1 of 2′.
2. Print out labels from the database to be affixed to the 5 boxes.
3. Enter Item Name for each theme of decorations that you have, i.e., Christmas or Thanksgiving or Spring. Click on Add Item, and when you add an item, Paper Tiger will assign a number to that color. In this example, box #1 item name might be Spring, box #2 item name might be Thanksgiving, box #3 item name might be Christmas, etc.
4. Enter Keywords for each theme, such as in box #1, your Spring items might include a spring flag, bunnies, tablecloth and picnic items
5. Match Label Numbers and Item Names: Make sure the label number you affix to each box matches the decoration theme that you input for the Item Name.

Of course, this could apply to any type of item. For instance, you may have a large collection of tools that you need to keep track of. In Paper Tiger’s database, you might name a Location “Workshop”, and in this Location, you can index the list of tools in your workshop, what tools are in what drawer, and what tools are hanging on the wall, and what tools are in the cabinet with doors, etc. So anyone in your family will be able to search the database and know exactly where you keep the drill and the drill bits, and they will know exactly where to put them back!

Where is all this stuff!?!

The bottom line is that once you use this simple system you can reclaim those shelves in an organized manner, whether your shelves have stacks of paper files, or books, or decorations, or tools. When you bring new items in, include them in Paper Tiger’s indexing system and you can always keep those shelves clutter free. When you declutter and get organized with Paper Tiger, you’ll know where everything is so you can easily retrieve what you need, when you need it!

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Tags: Clutter, Declutter, get organized, paper filing systems, Paper Tiger "finding" filing system

2 Responses to “How to Get Organized and Declutter Your Shelves for Good!”

1. 30 Blogs Featuring Tips to Help Achieve Your New Year’s Resolution | Live Out Nanny says:

   January 3, 2013 at 10:35 am

   [...] How to Get Organized and Declutter Your Shelves for Good! [...]
2. Janet Baker says:

   January 8, 2013 at 1:01 pm

   Thanks for featuring Paper Tiger on your blog! Much appreciated! Happy new year!