Get the Overwhelming Paper Piles Organized in 3 Steps

I’m sure you know it doesn’t take long for paper to pile up. We’re all busy, so throwing everything into a stack is the easiest way to manage it all …but life happens, and those piles start to multiply. Eventually those piles are nothing but paper clutter and you don’t know what to do! So many paper piles are overwhelming!

I worked with one client who had multiple life-changing events within a single year. Since she was caring for her loved ones, keeping up with all the paper piling up in her office was low on the list of priorities. Once that season ended, she was ready to move forward and restart her business. But her cluttered, disorganized office was standing in her way.

On our first day working together, I knew the paper piles were the elephant in the room. If we wanted to make progress, that’s what we needed to tackle first!

Even though the number of paper piles was overwhelming, it didn’t take very many hours to complete the paper decluttering project. I can’t guarantee the same for you, but these 3 steps will make things more manageable.

Let’s break down how to make an overwhelming amount of paper piles into a doable project.

Before we started, I asked the client what her goal was for her office.

She wanted a cute, inspiring office where she could meet with her clients. She described the office of a friend that had white and girly decor, which is something she wanted for her own office.

When you know what you want to achieve at the end, you can work backwards step-by-step. In this situation, I knew we needed to create a system to keep paper clutter from piling up again, create homes for all the papers that would be kept, and declutter the paper currently taking over the room. Once my job was done, my client would be able to decorate and keep things organized.

Step 1: Start with one stack

The way to get started is to start small. Taking it bit by bit makes it easier to do the actual task.

When it comes to paper clutter, I say, grab one pile and declutter it. It doesn’t matter where you start …just start.

So that’s exactly what we did. We worked through one pile at a time, sorting it by keep, shred, and recycle.

Step 2: Categorize the “keep” papers

It’s totally fine to separate your “keep” papers into general categories as you go. It doesn’t have to be perfect. The main focus here is decluttering, but it does save a little bit of time later. It’s kind of like putting together a puzzle. Separate the corners and edge pieces and try to sort the other pieces by color.

Once we finished doing the decluttering part, we looked at what was left and started sorting the paper by long-term reference papers or by short-term papers.

Step 3: Create an actionable paper system

After we knew which papers would need to be worked on in the short-term, we set up a place on the desk where the papers could live. As long as the client sticks with this actionable paper system, the paper shouldn’t get out of control again.

So, with those 3 steps, start with one stack, make categories, and create an actionable paper system, we got that office looking way better and manageable. It’s crazy what taking a few small steps can do to transform a space from overwhelming paper piles to clean and organized!

Now pin this article to Pinterest and go get your papers organized!

Unsure which papers go where? Download my free Paper Organizing Cheatsheet to help you decide.