 And we're live, it's official. Thank you guys so much for joining me today. I'm Angela Brown with the Ask a House Cleaner Show and today, today, we're gonna dig into the depths of clutter. I know many of you are here against your wishes, against your will. You are wishing that we didn't have to have a real conversation about clutter, but yet today here we are and we're gonna do that. So thank you so much for joining me. I am super excited about today's topic because as we're going through lots of your clutter, we're coming through lots of realizations. And one of the unfortunate things about all of this is I'm coming to my own realizations about clutter. I wanna stop for just a second before we get on to today's topic, which is paper clutter. And I wanna talk about what happened last week and the week before and the week before that in order to prepare these clutter corner sessions for you. I have gone through some of my own things and much to my dismay, I have more clutter than I actually knew I did. Last week we talked about small kitchen appliances and I started out by taking the smaller plants quiz that is on the hoarding world website. And I will leave links to that in the replay so that you guys can access the hoarding world quiz if you didn't already. I took the quiz myself because I wrote the quiz, but as I took the quiz in the back of my head, I thought that I had about four to six kitchen appliances. And then as I pulled everything out of my cupboards and I started filming it, I realized that although I had a place for everything, I actually had 22 kitchen appliances. And what caught my attention was there's talk in our family of us moving sometime soon. And if that was the case, my question is, would I take 22 small kitchen appliances with me? And the answer is no. So we are having lots of honest conversations with ourselves about this stuff that we have and what happens next. I don't want you to get rid of all of your stuff, but as I went through my kitchen appliances, I realized that there was a toaster oven that we don't use very often and I ended up giving it away. So I got rid of one of those and I got rid of a crock pot that was cute, but I never use it and never have used it. So I was able to get rid of two things. I still have 20. And as we go through this series over and over again, we're gonna keep paring down until we find that perfect comfort zone. So today it's okay. And I want you to give yourself permission to be uncomfortable because nothing was ever easy with progress. And I say it wasn't easy. When you go to the gym, what do you do? You go and you lift weights and you hurt and your sore and your muscles ache and you break down your muscles only so that as they rebuild, they get stronger, right? So this is the same kind of process. As we go through the clutter in our homes and in our lives, it's not that we want it to be easy. It's not gonna be easy. It's gonna be hard. It's gonna be stressful and it's going to be hard. And as we break it down and we create new rules about our relationship with stuff, we get better at it. The more you do something, the better you get at it. And as you create new rules, it's gonna prevent you from going into stores, for example, or going to yard sales or thrift stores or what have you and replacing items that you just got rid of. So I wanna tap over to you guys for a minute and I wanna see have any of you got rid of any of the things that we've covered in the last couple of weeks and would you share with us your experience? I know for me, we did a session on totes and I got rid of 11 totes and they were all organized. I had a place for all of them. But if I were moving, and this is my question, if I were moving, would I take 11 totes with me? And the answer is no, I really only need one at a time. And so for what I'm using them for, one at a time is sufficient. So do I have more than I need? Heck yeah. And can I get rid of some of those without any harm? Like I'm not gonna feel bad or have remorse that I got rid of stuff that I was using or any of those things. It's like, yeah, it's kind of like extra. I can get rid of it. So I wanna tag in. I see that Sally has already joined us. So Sally, I'm super excited that you've joined us. I'm gonna have you jump up here and join me on camera. And thank you for coming back. It's good to see you again. How are you? Good, how are you? Good, it's good to see you again. Share with us. I know one of the first weeks that we met, you got rid of a bunch of fingernail polish. Tell us about your experience. Have you missed it since then? Not really, no, I don't miss it at all. Because I totally don't use it at all. I mean, I do have some bottle by you for my toe, not the fingers anymore, so no. So there was no remorse by getting rid of it? No. Did your life change in any way as a result of you making that decision? I would say that not the drastic change, but I gained more space under my sink. You have days, one change, so. Okay, so it's a small change, but I mean, nothing bad happened, like you didn't get sick and you've been speaking for weeks as a result of this decision to get rid of your fingernail polish. So nothing bad happened, right? Okay, I'm gonna say that's a win, right? You made a decision, you did something about it, and I'm gonna say that's a win, right? Okay, cool. I'm really proud of you for that. Is there anything else over the last few weeks we've gotten rid of? I know you've joined us a few times. Yes, one thing that I learned that is the sauce. We do talk about the sauce packet, the plastic utensil or that thing. So when it comes to dosing, now I kind of more aware. So when I don't need them, when I buy any takeout or whatever, I tell them, don't give me the sauce, can be the ketchup, whatever. So I don't bring those extra packages or ketchup or utensil home anymore unless I really need it and I request it. Normally I ask them to take it out or they kind of appreciate the takeout or all that. So they can use for the next customer who ever needed it. So I'll kind of reduce the clutter in my house. With all the sauce, they eventually had to throw it kind of waste. And that's a really important one. We talked on one of our sessions here about the little sauce packets, like those little ketchup packs and mustard packs that you get at the fast food place when you go through the drive-thru. And we discovered that many of us have extras that they just throw in the bag. Then when we get home, we don't wanna throw them away because they're good, right? So we stuff them in a drawer and we save them and yet we don't use them for the most part. Some people do but for the most part, no. And so we decided to make a conscious decision that we take what we need and then we give the rest back to the restaurant and say, oh, thank you, we don't need the plastic fork and the extra mustard ketchups and all that stuff. Here you keep them, use them for your other guests, right? And so now Sally is doing that. So yay, again, I'm gonna say that's a win. All right, awesome. Thank you, Sally for joining us. I'm gonna let you jump off screen here and then you can bounce back in if you're ready. Okay, so today we're gonna talk about clutter and it's the paper clutter that's in our house and there is a paper clutter quiz. I found out this morning that they've changed the whole process of our quiz system. And so the people that took the quiz so far, it gave you like zero, like I said, hey, you're perfect, you have no clutter and the people were like emailing me going, I do have some clutter. So that quiz should be fixed later this afternoon. They got most of it fixed, but we're waiting on the tech guys to add the quiz scores back. Going through the quiz, I wanted to highlight a couple of things. One of the first things that comes to mind when I say paper clutter is the mail that comes into our house. We invite mail into our house. Some of us even have a post office where we go to the post office and we get more mail and we bring it into our house. So my question for you is, do you have a place and a process for collecting your mail? When you bring your mail into your house, what happens next? I'm gonna go over to the comments. Rita's joined us. Rita, I'm gonna have you jump up here with me. And if you will share with us your experience with mail. When you get mail, what do you do with it? So I actually am pretty good about mail, I think. Usually when I come in the door with mail, I'll sort all of my roommate's mail into like the piles for who it belongs to. And we have like a specific space in our kitchen where we put mail that everyone knows to go look for their mail there and any advertisement type stuff or random business cards that just go right in the trash. So there's a system. Yes, I love that. All right, so some of the common systems are, you sort it immediately. And if I'm out at my street and I'm bringing mail into my house, I have a garbage can right inside my garage and I have a garbage can right inside my front door. And so for me, when I'm bringing the mail in, if the garage door's open, I'm gonna come in through the garage. And if it's not, and I'm coming in through the front door, it's gonna go in one of those two garbage cans on the inside of my house, okay? And the reason being is I'm gonna give myself all the way till the time I get from my mailbox to my house to make the decisions on stuff that is sent to me. And there is, where is it? I don't, I do have it. This, I wanna show you this. This is an ad that came in my mailbox. And the reason I'm showing it to you is because advertisers are getting smarter about the types of things they sent us. This has highlighting on it, and it has a bunch of scribble, and it looks like notes I took myself. And so at first glance, I think, oh, this is important because look, it has scribble and handwriting on it, right? We put value on things that are our own data, right? We've talked about this before. People don't argue with their own data, but they'll argue with someone else's. So if someone sends me an ad and they say, oh, well, this is the coolest product on earth, I'm gonna go, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's an ad. But if it looks like something that I made notes on myself, I'm gonna keep it, right? So now we're being tricked into keeping junk mail. Don't do it, don't fall for it. One of the things that is important is that there is a system. I know many people will bring in mail and they will sort it with an amount of a few, I don't know, a few days, and that's okay if you're gonna make a little stack and then you're gonna sort it by the end of the week. But only if, only if you have something on your schedule that says like every Sunday I sit down and I go through all my mail, I go through all my bills, I pay my bills, I do my weekly accounting, I file all of my receipts, I reconcile everything with QuickBooks, and then there's a system, right? There's a system. If it just stacks up on your counter, it oftentimes gets covered by, I don't know, pan lids and groceries and coats and things get thrown on the counter and then it kind of like disappears out of sight, out of mind, bills forget to get paid, things that are important like gift cards that come in the mail or if it's an RSVP for something oftentimes it gets slighted or ignored because it's out of sight, out of mind. So we wanna have some kind of a system in place. Now I love Rita's system because she deals with it immediately. And if you do not have the habit of dealing with it immediately, I want for this to be a conversation where you decide, I need to deal with my mail immediately so that bills don't go unpaid. It's expensive, really, really expensive when you have bills that go unpaid because then you get hit with late fees. And every time there's a late fee, that's a penalty for not checking and responding to your mail in a timely manner, okay? That's the fee that you pay. And so we wanna prevent all of that. We don't want that to happen. Erin has joined us. Erin, I don't see your camera. Are you wanting to jump up here and say hi? I would love to answer your questions. And I do see Sally is back. Rita, thank you so much for joining us. This is so much fun. I'm going to add Sally back. Sally's here. Sally, do you have a program for responding to your mail? I kind of similar with the Rita. Once I receive it, I throw the normal junk away right away and they come to search our how to say that. Second category junk, those that with my full name, with my address one or like pre-approved or critical, pre-approved thing like that. Then I'll put my shredder machine and shred it off. And then the bills normally at that night, once we receive, we pay that very night itself. And by most of my utilities is on auto pay. So those are not worried, but other bills I pay the moment I receive it at night I sit down and we pay it. I love the auto pay. Thank you so much for bringing that up. If you guys are comfortable at all with moving to auto pay, it reduces the bills that come to your house. I know that over the last couple of years we've consciously moved away from having bills sent to our house so that it just pops up and it says, hey, here's your electronic reminder. And then it auto pays it. It just takes the money right out of your bank account. And some people like to be on top of it where they like to manage it and say, yes, it's okay for you to take it. And the reminder then is just that cue that, hey, it's time to pay that bill. So it doesn't just suck it out of your account, but it is the reminder then that now it's time to do that. And so having something electronically is far better than all of the trees that we're killing in hopes of having physical reminders. Now I know that early, and I'm gonna go back to the early stages of my business because for, I don't know, 30 years I've been trying to get away from paper and this last year we went completely paperless. The only paper that we have right now in our office is a filing system. And it is one that you see here behind me. And I don't know, do you guys have an electronic filing system already? So do you have an electronic filing system or are you still using paper? I'm slowly getting into it, but no, I'm still in the beginner, yeah. Okay, I'm gonna let you jump off camera for just a second and thank you so much for joining us. I love your ideas and your feedback, so thank you. So for the paper filing system, and I wanna show you this, I'm gonna step back here just a minute. This has worked for me for many years. And one of the things that I've used is just a milk case. And for those of you that are not familiar with milk cases, I actually grew up, my dad ran a dairy. And so this milk case, and here's one, it will hold four gallons of milk. They sell them in ones that self carry four gallons and one that carries six. The four gallon is just sufficient for most things. On the inside, if you're gonna use the milk case system, there's a little groove on the inside of the milk case. And as you lift it upright, it holds hanging file folders. And with the hanging file folders, what you can do is you can put in envelopes just like this and it holds them upright. And so then what you do is alphabetically all the way back, you list all of your bills. And these are bills that you're keeping. And I know for my situation, I've been a business owner. And so being a business owner, I had a lot of things like warranties. We buy a new vacuum and I need to keep the warranty on file. And so I will file it under an envelope called vacuums. And if we have company cars, I'm gonna have each car by its own name. So if it's a Ford Fusion, then it's under F for Ford Fusion. If it's a Honda, it's under H for Honda. And then every time we have service, they give you like a receipt when you pay for your service. All those service receipts go inside the file. If there are payments, like I know back in the olden days before we did auto pay on vehicles, they had these little booklets that they would send you. And the little booklets would be little payments that you would rip it out and you would send it with a check in with your payments. So all of the copies of those payments would go inside the file at the end of the year. What was cool about that is if you ever go to sell the car, you simply pull out the one folder and you've got all the service records. You've got the warranty, you got the sticker from the window of the car. You've got all that stuff in one spot, which makes it really great every time you do inspection or registration or any of those things. So what I want us to think of is in terms of systems. And so while this was a paper system, it was a system and it worked really, really, really well. There are three ways that we deal with paper when they come in. And I have a prerecorded video that I wanna show you real fast and it's gonna set the stage for the rest of our conversation because I want us to have a system. And so I'm gonna jump over here real quick and I'm going to have us watch this and I'm gonna just jump off stage for just a second and I'll be right back. Now I will preface this by saying I am not a professional organizer. This question is actually probably better suited for a professional organizer, but as a business owner, I have to be highly organized and this is the system that I use. All right, so all of my electronic files go on five terabyte hard drives that are very small and they look like this. We keep all of our video files, our audio files, our images. If we have a guest on the show, we have all of their waivers, all of their releases. All of that is an electronic version. So we will do another whole show on the electronic version of organizing. But this today is the paper version. Now what you're seeing here in front of me, I have three different categories and one is a milk crate with hanging file folders and inside I have nine by 12 envelopes and I have the name of the item written across the top flap of the envelope. This filing system here is for an entire year and these are my active files. Now these are annual reports. These are annual reports for my LLC that I have to file every year and so that is what this bin here is. These are active files. In the middle here I have a box of tax information which is all of these envelopes inside one year as a bankers box that is filed on file for 10 years. Now we're supposed to keep them I believe for about seven years but I keep mine for 10 just in case. So for example, let's say that I bought a company car five or eight years ago and I'm not really sure but I need the information for the business loan for that car. It's gonna be in the bankers box under the item that I tagged it for inside this file. So if I ever have to reference anything whether it's a warranty for a vacuum or it's something for a vehicle if it's the deed to a house, whatever it is it's going to be inside the bankers box filed by the year and you see on the front it says 2015. So this is 2015's taxes that I'm going to use. I'm gonna keep this until 2025. 2025 I'm gonna take the lid off this box and I'm gonna pull out whatever the files are that are in here and I'm gonna shred these documents and then I'm gonna reuse this box. I'm literally gonna turn this box around and I'm gonna write 2025 on there and I will recycle this bankers box. So I will have this bankers box for actually 20 years. Okay, but that's my filing system. Okay, so I have active and archived and then my third section here is my away. So it's the three A's of organization. Active, archived, and away. Active, archived, and away. The away is the tossing or the garbage can. What we're looking at here is a paper shredder. Okay, so every piece of information that comes to your office, whether it's a receipt or a piece of mail or whatever goes in one of these three places. So it's either active, it needs to be paid, it needs to be dealt with today or in the near future. It is archived like the loan to your vehicle or the deed to your house or it could be a passport information or the registration for your concealed carry or whatever it is. There are things that you don't need every day but it's nice to know where they are. Those are the archived ones. And then there's the junk and the junk goes right into the garbage can or it gets shredded. I prefer to shred it because that has sometimes personal information on it, your address, your phone number, that kind of stuff. Who knows what it is, but we shred that. So active, archived, and away. Now this is in my office at all times. This is an entire year at a glance. And so for example, what is inside my active files? Well, right here I have an envelope that has all of my warranties in it. And these are warranties for current cleaning products that we are using right now. So this would be steamers, it would be vacuums, mobs, things like that that have moving parts or part numbers. Now I have a printer that is in our office and in here is the instruction guide or the user's guide to that printer. And it also has a DVD in case something malfunctions and I have to reinstall the software for that. And so that's where this goes right here, very easy to access. And it's right here in my office at all times. So at any time, if I need the information, boom, it's right here. Alrighty, so that was my active archive and away system. And it works really, really, really well because I'm making a decision at all times which of the three categories does this go in? And I really love this concept because there's no guesswork, okay? You're gonna make a decision at any time. Now in that video, you watched me pull out my warranties. And one of the things that's really important about the warranties is this. There is an archived file that I keep on my computer and it is completely electronic, if you will. And I asked the question in our quiz, how many of you have passwords that you have stuck on post-it notes on your computer? Are they stuck on a, you know, on a notepad? Are they scribbled somewhere in a notepad that's near your computer? Like how do you keep track of passwords? And that's a really big bugaboo for a lot of people because a lot of people are using one password for all of their accounts, which is not safe. And then lots of people are posting their passwords. I'm not kidding, right on the monitor. So if someone were to break into your house, why are they still your computer and your password and they can log in, right? So one of the things that I discovered several years ago and it's really helped me as far as the paper goes because I too am a scribbler and I have on every desk, I have like little scribble pads where I make notes for the day. And then hopefully I crossed them out by the end of the day, like they're my to-do list, right? Hopefully I'm done with my to-dos and I'm able to cross them out but I would not write passwords on there at all times anywhere for any reason. And so I do have an electronic vault and if you do not have one, I'm gonna really encourage you today to start thinking in terms of a password vault. The one that I use is called Keeper Security. It's not sponsored. It's just that I've been using it for many years and everybody on my team uses Keeper Security. So like if you come as an employee or own Keeper Security account with all of the passwords that you need to run your account. So whether it's customer's information, whether it's alarm codes to their house, it's in a secure password vault that only you have access to. So other members of the team don't have access to it, only you if that's the house that you're cleaning. If there's information that you need that's specific to your job, you need to log into a website or you need to log into an account. You have that information at your disposal and I can give that to them by adding that to their secure vault. And then if they log in with one password, it unlocks all of the other passwords. The reason I like Keeper Security and it's the system that I use is because with one keyword, it will search all the different fields that are inside the password vault. So for example, if I bought a new vacuum and we'll just say that it's a light and easy vacuum. So if I have a light and easy vacuum and I have the warranty that's in there, I don't know, is this a light and easy steamer? Is it a light and easy mop? Is it a light and easy robot vacuum? Like what is it? And so I can either type in like light and easy and it will pull up all of the records that have all the different products or I can type in light and easy steamer and it will only pull up the steamer products or I can just type in the word steamer. You see how this works? And it will pull up all the steamers that we have that are in our company. The cool part about that is is every single time I buy a product and this is the newer way of what I'm doing. In that video, I had an envelope that had the warranty information in it and I used to save stuff that way. Now what I'm doing is I'm scanning the warranty books immediately as they come in and then I have the warranty on file. I have the manual, the how-to manual and then I'm finding that it's also easier if I need to click really quickly instead of, oh yes, well that's at home and I'm on a job right now and I don't have access to that manual to unclog something. What I can do is I can jump to the Dropbox folder, open it up, boom, there it is, right? The one password opens everything up and I said Dropbox. If you don't have it stored to Dropbox you'll want it stored inside your Keeper file but with one password in Keeper I can open that up, boom, there it is. So I like to scan everything from the very beginning and then what's also cool is this. I always add, because when you get the manual of how something works there's usually a customer support information there as well. So I love to add in the customer service support, the email, the phone number, whatever in case I am on a job and then there's something that malfunctions if I need immediate help, I'm not, oh yes, at home there's a file folder somewhere and it has the techno information that I can call somebody and get some help I'll have to do that later because then you're putting tasks off into the future. We want to deal with them immediately. And so by having that information at your disposal, boom, there it is. It's also great for things like credit cards. If you ever go overseas and they say don't take your credit cards with you that's cool. But if you needed to use a credit card oftentimes people will let you use your number if you can prove your identity. So it is awesome. If you don't have to physically carry it with you you carry your keeper with you you know the password, it's accessible on any device. And so if you need to buy something while you're out and about even if you're buying it online you open your password, boom, you've got your information. So it saves a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of hassle and there are lots of bits of information that you can save. So I want us to start thinking in terms of am I ever going to need that information again? Number one, number two how easy is it going to be for me to find? And if it's not easy to find you need a new system. I'm not trying to be ugly but what I'm trying to say is this we need to streamline everything that we're doing for the, for lots of reasons. But let's say that as a business owner I want to outsource some tasks to people in my company. And so I can say here's the information you need it's inside your keeper. I don't need to be passing notes back and forth and texting them stuff. And every time you send secure data there's a risk of it getting intercepted somewhere along the way. So if you can minimize that that's always helpful, right? And it's also helpful if you don't have to do everything yourself. So if someone else on your team can help outsource some of those tasks by having the right information that's great. Also I know that my parents are on keeper and I have the password to their information as well. I set them up on accounts because as they get older the day may come, it's not here now but the day may come when they may get forgetful. And they don't remember their passwords or they don't know how to log into something. I know sometimes my mother calls me she's like, I got locked out of Google or something. And I'm like, no worries, I can log you back in. And I go to her keeper and I look at the password and I log her back in. I'm 2,500 miles away, right? But I can help my mom because I know the information that she's looking for that maybe she forgot or she didn't have access to at that moment. So we wanna make it as easy for ourselves as possible by streamlining the clutter that we have in our lives. And so with the filing system, this is really awesome because it is filable at the end of the year just by having something that is like a banker's box. This is the banker's box that we use and they flatten if you're not using them right away. So I do have a stash of them but as the years have gone by and I get rid of one year I'm bringing in a new year of stuff that I'm saving and I'm getting rid of an old year. Last year was the last year we had paper in our office. So I've got a few more years on file and every year we're letting one of those go but I'm not bringing in any new receipts now. I'm not bringing in any new paper into the office. And so if you're not at a paperless place yet I wanna encourage you to try to do that. Now I'm gonna jump over here. We've got Jill on with us. I'd love to bring Jill on. And hey, Jill, how are you today? Hey, good and how about yourself? Great, good to see you today. Good to see you. I'm sorry I joined late. I'm actually working but I had a meeting. So I apologize. Is this gonna be rebroadcast on YouTube later? Yeah, so what's really cool about this is we're doing this mini series where we're working on Clutter. And for those of you that are just joining us this is an ongoing program for the next several weeks and we meet Thursday at 2 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. And we're dealing with different areas of our lives in terms of Clutter. And it's not that we want you to get rid of stuff that you're using. The rule is if you're using it, if you're not using it, lose it. Use it or lose it. If you're not using it, let's get rid of it. If you are using it, that's great. And as we uncover some things, you might go, oh my goodness, I love that and yet I'm not using it. So then the rule is, rungo use it. Start putting this into action. I was clearing out some of my cupboards and I found some really cool little party dishes. And I said, oh, I haven't used these in a long time because of COVID, we didn't have any parties. So I said, I'm gonna have to lose this if I don't use it. And like two days later, we had a party and then I used them just so that I didn't have to throw them away, right? So today we're talking about Paper Clutter and Jill, I'm curious, do you have a system that you're using right now that's working really well for you? I'm embarrassed to say you were just talking about I'm guessing a software or an application keeper. I hadn't heard of that before. I actually keep a little red book of like all of my passwords and things like that. But I try to, on an annual basis, go through and shred everything that I know I won't need for tax purposes or medical records, things like that. And thank you for bringing that up. I think shredding is the next best step. And I wanna just add, I don't think I have it here. I was gonna add a little video of shredding. Let me see if I can find that real quick. Let me see if I can share my screen with you. Because this will bring some, I don't have it here. Well, there you go. This has been my week of colossal techno failures. I've had lots of failures this week. So I've had them all this week. I mean, they've all happened this week. And I say here, I say here frustrated and super embarrassed, but then at the same time I'm learning. And I think that's one of the important things that we have to give ourselves forgiveness on is as long as we're learning, as long as we're moving forward, we can't be too hard on ourselves. One of the things about shredding is this, I've got two shredders and I have two because I bought one that was cheap and it would like have six pages that would go through. And then I bought one later that would have like 16 pages that would go through simultaneously. And if you run them to the maximum, either one will get overheated. And so then I go to the next one, like I have them side by side and I will go to the next one when the one overheats. And I'm like doing simultaneously like I'll put stuff in here and shred it and then stuff in here and shred it back and forth and back and forth. And the thing that's interesting about the shredding process is the shredders now are cross-cut so that it's not just shredded where people could like glue them back together like you've seen in the movies where the bad guy glues the information together and then he still somebody's identity or whatever. And I love what Jill said about shredding stuff, especially medical documents, sensitive information. This goes for old bills. It goes for old tax records. It goes for information that just any information. I know that I get a lot of credit card offers where people are trying to sign me up with their credit cards. Someone could intercept that and with not much trouble, they could fill out the information and maybe open a credit card in my name. And then whatever happens on that credit card I would be responsible for if it were to get in the wrong hands, right? So you wanna make sure that you are very careful about shredding documents that come into your house. And so like I said, when I come in the house, the stuff that goes inside the garbage cans from my mailbox is stuff like junk mail. It's just junk mail that doesn't have my address on it. But it has my address or if it's sensitive information. I know I shouldn't say this, but I now get the AARP stuff. I shred that too just for kicks. I'm like, oh, I know you don't. I'm not ready for that yet. I think that's just annoying when, how do they assume that? But I guess, yeah, that you get on a mailing list. I don't like getting the AARP things either. But I'm curious what your opinion is with a lot of times communities will do like shredding. And I've never felt comfortable, if a community has like a shredding day where you can take your personal documents. Again, that may be a control thing, but I'm like, well, what if it only gets partially thrown away or shredded or something like that? Well, I love what they're trying to do. Again, they're trying to make sure that your documents are secure and that they don't get into the wrong hands. So it's the right idea. Whether or not you participate in a community event or you do your own event is gonna be entirely up to you and your level of comfort. I'm a business. And so as a business owner, we have lots of people who send resumes to us. Those resumes have personal information. It's got their phone number. It's got their job history. It's got their email addresses. I don't want that to go into even a regular garbage can just out of respect for the people that sent me their private information. I wanna shred that properly. We also have people that have worked for us over the years. And so we have their tax information. They're W2s, they're 1099s. We have all of that stuff on file. And so after the years have expired, I mean, okay, so they're no longer working with us. That's cool. But their social security number that's on their tax information didn't change. That's still the same, right? And so I wanna make sure that that stuff is shredded. I don't want that as far as in my car to go to a community center where anyone could do anything with it, right? I'm responsible for that. And so for that reason, I have a couple of shredders that I use. And this system is I have time on the schedule to shred. So I do shred at all times during the year, but at least once a year when I do my tax stuff and I'm getting rid of, I'm bringing in one new tax box, but I'm getting rid of another one. I will shred all that stuff at that same time. Do we have any questions on that so far? I'm gonna jump over to the chat here. You know, we've had some comments coming in. Oh, oh, oh, we've got somebody here that's a real big fan of the AARP. I know, I know I'm fighting it. I just don't wanna be in that category yet, you know, give me a break. It's not the organization, it's the age. I know, they're gonna give me discounts and I should just go, oh, thank you so much. I'll take care of this one. The blue star here says here in the UK, we only need to keep receipts for six years. So I have six bankers boxes and I store on the loft, discarding each year, April to April via shredding. And I also relabel the bankers boxes. That's the system. That's the system right there is you bring one box and you let one box go. And the shredding is the way to go because it's gonna get rid of a lot of the documents that you just don't wanna be responsible for, right? Once you're done, you're done. Now, as we are approaching and the AARP age, we have to ask ourselves the question, do we want our family members dealing with our stuff? And if not, what is our plan to get rid of it? I have many clients that I've worked with over the years as a professional house cleaner. I've been a professional house cleaner for 25 years and we've helped a lot of families with organization processes inside their home. And I feel really bad because one of the women that I worked for had lots and lots of boxes. They were like those big banana boxes that you see at the grocery store. And she had one box per year for each of her children with like homework assignments and pictures that they grew mommy and all these cool things. One box per year per child. She had five children. And I went in and I helped her. I don't know why I was like enabling her, but I helped her move all of her banana boxes to plastic bins that she could see through so that at a glance and she labeled them all and we put them up in the attic and it was nice. It was like this, I don't know, wall of fame, if you will. You walk in and here's one son and his 41 boxes and another son and his 38 boxes and so on. And then the day came where like, hey, what are you doing with that? And she hadn't gotten rid of it, but as she was aging, she was gonna downscale her house and go to a smaller house. And so what are we gonna do with that stuff? And that became the question, what are we gonna do with it? And so she said, well, I'm gonna give it to my kids. Like my kids want this stuff, we're like, do they? And she hadn't ever asked them, do you want these 41 boxes of stuff that I've saved over the 41 years of your life? So we went to her son and we said, hey, mom's got all these boxes, do you want them? And what's really weird and it was very eye-opening to her and to me and to the son was he said, no, I don't want any of them. I have boxes for my own children and we are products of our own environment. We repeat what we saw done to us and he saw his mother saving all these boxes and he had saved one box for all of his children for every year that they were alive and they were stored in his attic. He said, I don't want my 41 boxes, I've got too many boxes of my own. Okay, that's a small problem. What happens if the mother passes on and there are all these boxes, right? Who deals with that stuff? And so what we were able to do is we were able to scan and I don't know if scanning is part of your process. If it's not, I want it to be considered. Jill, do you use a scanner? No, I don't. Okay. I work remotely from home. Okay. Thanks for bringing that up. If you are collecting photos, like if you have boxes of photos or if you have documents or you have boxes of your kid's school work and stuff like that, this might be a perfect opportunity to get an inexpensive scanner. I'm not real big on selling you guys anything. I want for you to get rid of stuff, not bring more stuff in, but a scanner might be a really good investment. And with that, you can put the scanner on like a folding card table. I've got these little tables are so awesome. I bought them at Costco and the legs move up and down. So I can move the table down low so that I can sit on the couch and it's still like lower than where I'm sitting. So I can put the scanner on one side and I can do boxes of photos. I can like you scan, like you open the lid, you put the picture in, you close the lid and you hit scan. And then when it's done, it says it's done or the little thing buzzes over the light changes. Then you take the picture out and you do that with the next picture and you can do like 500 pictures while you're watching movies one night, right? So it's an easy way to kind of get everything electronic. And one of the reasons that I like the scanner is because it forces you to have conversations with yourself. Now with this one woman, I said, do you wanna scan all 41 boxes? And she's like, heck no. Okay, well, let's pick out one or two items from each box that's meaningful to you and we'll scan that, we'll put that on an electronic file. And then for her, what we did is we got one of those picture frames where you send your pictures to the picture frame. And so then she was able to send like 41 pictures to her picture frame that represented each of her kids. And she did take a couple of snapshots of things, but we were able to shred everything else, we were able to purge everything else and get rid of it so that her attic wasn't full. When she downsized to a smaller location, she was now dealing with smaller amounts of stuff. And then in the event that one day she passes away, which I mean, we're all gonna pass away at some time. I don't mean to make it like Gory, but her kids are then not dealing with that, right? So she gave them first ride of refusal. She said, do you want these? And what's interesting about having these conversations, and this is if you're helping a family member or even you yourself. As you have these conversations, you start thinking, wait a second, I have stuff that I'm saving for family members or kids or whatever. I know my husband came home one night and he said, I've just been over at my mom's house and she has this little christening dress of me all these years ago when I was born. And I said, oh, what are you doing with it? And he goes, well, I don't know. She asked me if I wanted it. And I said, do you want it? And he said, no, why would I want it? And he said, the sad part about saving it is he said, there are two people in the world that that would have any meaning to it all. And that's me and my mother. And he said, and it means nothing to me. I don't want it. So his mother's been saving it his entire life, like one day what she's gonna give it to him. And now she's trying to give it to him and he doesn't want it. You know what I mean? So sometimes we're hanging on to stuff that we think it's gonna mean something to people and maybe it doesn't at all. I wanna stop for just a second and find out from you guys. Sally's back. Jill, thank you so much for joining us. I loved having you today. Thank you so much. I'm gonna bring Sally back here. Sally, do you have boxes of stuff that you're hanging on to from your kids by any chance? You're on mute. You're still on mute. Yes, I have some boxes that I keep because I have two kids. And then as they go to school for elementary to middle school, so whatever their artwork, their report card. So same thing. One of them have one box for each year. I keeping that. I don't know why just any drawing I find is cute and whatnot, like, oh, it's cute. Then I keep it, but then two years, I mean, two years ago, the COVID, I got nothing to do. So I started downsizing. So the thing that I find it beautiful and cute like the artwork and whatnot that I take a picture as scan or take picture and save it. And then I kind of throw it a lot away because the boxes is kind of piled up very fast in the ethic. I don't know why cute stuff makes you want to keep it. There's something about that. I found like some little tiny baby cowboy boots and they were so cute. And a part of me was like, I want to buy those. Those are just so cute. And I had to stop and say, I don't have any reason on earth that I would buy those, right? There's, I don't even have a use for them. They're just so cute. And so what I did is I took a picture of them. I'm like, wow, that's so cute. And then I shared it on social media and got a bunch of likes and everybody that wanted to enjoy the cuteness got to enjoy it. And I didn't have to spend any money for it at all. I just think that's awesome. And I'm starting to think in terms that way, right? Is there stuff that's really cute but do I need to hang on to it? And that's the question. Thank you, Sally for sharing that with us. That's really interesting. We do have a question here. This is what's the best way to digitize pre-digital photos to a good quality? That's a tough question because the quality is what it is. And we can't go back in time to those old grainy photos and make them any better. There are services that will kind of sharpen them up a little bit and they will clean them up a little bit but they need the actual digital copy in order to try to make them better. So my suggestion is outsource that part to Fiverr. Just get them, just scan them and get them on a disc right now. Now I say a disc. Again, I said, I don't wanna sell you anything but I want you to be aware that there are options. Here's an option that I have available. This is a traditional photo box. This is where people keep their photos and it is like Pinterest. It's pretty to look at and it has decorations on it but I can't tell what's inside, right? It's just a pretty box and if you have hundreds of these on your shelf it means nothing, right? We don't know what this is. So my suggestion is let's not go for pretty. Let's go for practical and this is gonna be really unpopular for all of the Pinterest people that want everything color coded and they want everything beautiful and little labels and all that stuff. That's not, you're on the wrong YouTube channel. This is, that's not me. I'm all about practicality. Do it quick, do it fast, do it efficiently. That's my thing, right? And so one of the things that I wanna draw attention to is even the closets and the cupboards and the home offices and all the stuff that's really glamorous. Oftentimes we're the only people in our houses that see that, we're the only ones. We don't have gobs of people coming over going, oh, let me see your closet with all the beautiful little boxes of pictures in it. We just don't, right? So my suggestion is scan them and get them on a disc. Now I have discs, here's a box of discs that I have. These are all two and five terabyte hard drives and they're little discs about this size. I've labeled them all so that whatever the activity of the day is, there's a little label on all of these. Some of them have business cards. Where's my camera? There we go. Some of them have business cards based on if they're business. But what's interesting is in this box right here, where's my camera? There we go. In this box right here, I have 10 years of my life. I have 1300 YouTube videos. I have videos from like footage that I've used like B roll footage. I've got 1300 podcasts. I have all of my employee records. I have over a million photos. I mean, I've got it all in this one box. And you say, well, that's obsessive. Well, maybe. But there are a lot of people that have suffered and have been victims of hurricanes and flooding. And if you live in California, maybe fires and things like that. And so if you have, and this is just a question I wanna throw out there, but if you have 41 boxes per child and she didn't have 41 per child, she had 41 and then 40 and then 38 and then like 34 boxes, however old her kids were. But what's interesting about that is when there's a fire and you have to evacuate, what do you grab? What do you grab? What do you take with you? If you had to leave on the spur of the moment, what do you grab? I know what I'm grabbing. I'm grabbing this little clear plastic shoe box that has my entire life in it that's all digitized, right? It's easy to manage. It's easy to maneuver and it's completely usable, right? I plug it into any device anywhere and I can access the information. And so I want us to start thinking in terms of how do I take what I have and consolidate it and get rid of it? If you have paper, can you go to one box where everything that you have is in one box? Can you do that? And that's my challenge to you. I wanna answer some questions here because I think I've given you a real challenge. I don't know if Sally is a doable. Yes, doable, yep. I really love your envelope organization. I have that because a certain thing like a house date or passport copy, I do have, I put in the category in the envelope and I scan it as well. So in case I need it, I have it both sides. So I do that. I really love the envelope organization. The envelope situation has served me really well for a long time. And for this reason, everything is alphabetized. I add my labels up here at the top after 10 years because at the end of the year, I just pull out the whole stack and they go into banker's box. And then if I ever get audited by the IRS, I go, here's your box. And I just give them the box. Okay, great, now they have what they need. But at the end of the year, this one doesn't have a number on it, but many years I've written whatever it is like American Express and then like 2022. And then that will go in the box at the end of the year. In the event that I ever need to reference something really quickly, I just open up the box because I've got them all on a shelf. All the taxes are on one shelf. Boom, you pull out the year. You search by alphabetical order. It's all right there. You pull out the stuff that you need. And again, it's any records that you have that you have to reference. And then the thing that I like about it is when you do the recycling, oftentimes you can recycle the envelopes. And so I cross out the 2022 and I write 2029, seven years later when I'm recycling that session again, you can also turn it over and you can write on the other side of the flat and then just file it again because the envelopes last. They last for a very long time. You recommend nine by 12 envelopes if you're gonna get them because they hold eight and a half by 11 documents that just slide right in there. And so you have what you need without trying to make extra special, you know, whatever. And then it's easy to flip through just by taking a look at what's here and what's available. So easy, easy, easy to find. Very easy, yeah. So Sally, I want you to keep me posted if you decide to use my filing system for papers that you decide to keep. No, I did use your envelope system. I think about some times ago, maybe a year, a few months back, I watched a video on your YouTube channel and then you talk about the paper organization. So I started, I bought, I went out, I bought the banker box and I bought the envelope. So not just for tax purposes, it's for everything. The card and whatever card or the warranty. So I put in before that everything is in one big box. So I had to go through all the papers to search whatever the important. Now everything is envelope and I label it. So if I need a card thing, so I just search all of my car or I need a warranty. So I just take it or it's a lot easier because the envelope marker is clear, it's very well. Yay, okay, awesome. I'm super excited that you're using that system already. And it becomes really awesome because it is one box. It is literally one box. And so for example, if you have a home office, it can go right underneath the table or right underneath the desk or if you're working out of your living room, it can just sit right on the other side of your sofa where it's out of sight but it's not like a filing cabinet that's in the other room that I'm too tired. I'm not gonna get up and go in the other room and get the filing cabinet or whatever. It's wherever you're doing your paperwork. And so if you do your paperwork right there at your kitchen table, this can go right inside a cupboard underneath your counter where you just pull it out and there's all your stuff right there, right? It's easy to hide. I know lots of salesmen who work out of their cars. And so their mobile filing cabinet is right there on the back seat of their car or it's inside the trunk of their car but it's right handy all the information that they need, right? So just make it as easy as possible and it's very portable. And so like Sally said earlier if she's going to the accountant she can literally just take the box and here you go. Here's this year's taxes or this year's paperwork or whatever. So Rita is with us again. Sally, thank you for joining us. This is so much fun to see you guys and I love hearing your updates and your stories. Rita, how about you? What are you doing as far as filing systems? Are you filing stuff electronically or are you keeping them all in those notebooks that you mentioned? So I'm kind of like across both. Like I have things that I keep electronically but there's still some things where I'm stuck in my old ways. One of the things I have the biggest problem with right now is receipts I would say. So I don't know if you have like a good system for filing receipts but right now when I purchase things I'll like shove a receipt in my bag or in my glove compartment or I get home and just throw in a random drawer or something and then when I'm trying to return things or like reference those receipts again I'm always scrambling because I can't find them. Receipts are a tough one because I know in business we've saved receipts pretty much for everything that we've purchased for that exact same thing. If we have to take something back or if something's not working right and you try to file a warranty claim they're going to go, oh hey can you prove that you bought it and do you have the receipt right? So now one of the things that I do especially if it's a business item if this is a business item and I might at some point have to file a claim on the warranty or if something malfunctions or whatever I scan that receipt and it goes inside my keeper security so that I have access to that at a glance and then you can take a copy of that either download it to your phone and email it to somebody or whatever. But since you brought up receipts I do have a couple of plastic coupon holders that I use and these have just like a little elastic thing with a button on it. And when you open this up it's like a little accordion file that has like lots of receipts in it. And one of the things I should mention that this is 10 inches wide and five inches high. And I like these because they lay pretty flat and so you can take these and they go right between the car seat and the console. And so every time like for example I'm in a company car all my cars are company cars but if I'm in a company car and I'm putting gas in the car I get the receipt and then I circle the credit card that it was used to pay for the gas. I write the mileage down on the receipt itself so that I have track tracking of the mileage and then also the date that I purchased the gas and the car that I'm in. And so that way at a glance and it goes every car has their own little pouch and I like the black one because it kind of hides so that nobody but me knows that it's in the car but then at the end of the week on Sundays when I do my reconciliation with QuickBooks I just bring these in from the car and I pull out all the receipts and I go look we have a couple of entertainment receipts where we were out and about with employees or guests or what have you receipts for dining we've got receipts for gas we have a couple of business pieces of equipment that we purchased or whatever. If it's not an electronic file already and it is a paper receipt we put them inside our paper receipt folder so that we have these. And these I think you can actually pick up at the dollar store. So they're inexpensive but they're very, very effective. And so if you don't have a system for receipts again, this is one of those things start thinking in terms of this is the way that I'm doing it now and maybe it worked for a while but now I'm trying to advance and I'm trying to find a new system that's more effective for the future. And I want us to start thinking in terms of future-proofing our lives in terms of paper clutter because there are so many different types of clutter. One of the clutters that we have and I just wanna read this list to you and be thinking in terms of, oh yes, that's an issue for me or no, no, no, I've aced that. So if this is an issue for you you don't have to say anything but if you've aced it and overcome it type the word inside the chat so that I know what it is you're already good on. The mail that comes into your house do you have a program already for the mail or the junk mail that comes into your house? If you do, give us a thumbs up or go ahead and type mail in the comments. How about the bills that you have that come to your house? Do you have a program that's on the schedule? It's on the calendar. You sit down every Sunday at 6 p.m. and you do all of your accounting for the week. Is it set in stone? You know at the top of your head what that day is. If you do not have a date at the top of your head where you sit down and you do your bills you do not have a system. So don't write it down unless you do. If you do and you're like Johnny on the spot go ahead and write it down. To-do lists. To-do lists are a big bugaboo but do you have a system for your to-do list? Do you have a system for work assignments? These are assignments notes that you took, notes that you got from your boss, notes that you are doing for your own business if you're self-employed. Do you have a running list of things you have to do in your business and do you have a system for executing those and crossing those off? Do you have a list of journals and journal entries? These are things that happened in your life. These are momentous occasions. Are you tracking on a regular basis soccer games that your kids won or birthdays or holidays or fun events or things that would be memorable to family members after you leave the earth? Something for them to look back on and go, oh yeah, this was Jill's life. How awesome was that? Are you tracking that on a regular basis? If yes, give us a thumbs up or write it in the notes. How about paper calendars? Are you using paper calendars or do you have some form of an electronic calendar? And I'm curious, do write either paper calendar or electronic calendar. I'm curious to know what you guys are using. We may end up having another conversation about that altogether because there are a couple of things that I would suggest there as well. Coupons, do you clip coupons? I know that for many years I did and then I moved to electronic coupons and there are lots of different sites that offer coupons. We now use Savvy Perks because it's an app that goes right on your phone and then wherever you go to learn to and says, hey, there are discounts in this area. And then you click on one button and it gives you the coupon and you don't have to download anything. You don't have to print anything and there's no storing stuff and there's no expiration dates. I've moved electronic with my coupons. Homework assignments. Are you storing homework assignments for people that no longer live with you or they're no longer alive, right? We know that there are lots of kids that have gone off to college and their parents still have homework assignments from their high school years or whatever. I am one of those people. When I moved away from home, I left all my homework assignments with my mom and dad and they had to like deal with those after I'd moved away from home. I don't know what I thought I was gonna come back and reread my school notes. Nobody does that, right? All right, cards and letters. Do you save greeting cards and letters and do you have a system for those? Do you have a system for recycling them? Do you have a system for scrapbooking them? Do you have a system for dealing with them or just tossing them? If there's a system, give us a thumbs up or make it, make a note in the comments. Tell me about photos and negatives. Do you guys have like boxes of photos, old negatives and slides? Some of us still have slides back in the days when slides were a thing. I'm curious, what are you doing with those and do you have a system or do you need a system? Today is the day that we're gonna start having those honest conversations with ourselves. And like I said, it's okay to be uncomfortable about the answers. Catalogs, do you guys have catalogs? Do you have magazines? I would have said a week ago, no, not at all. And then as I started preparing for this today, I said, you know what, in my living room, I have a magazine stand with magazines that I have not purchased or gone through since before COVID. So they're like two years old. Do you guys have old magazines or old catalogs in your house? And type in the comments below. I'm just curious to know how old is the oldest phone book in your house? Is it less than one year old? Is it two to five years old? Is it six to 10 years old? Is it over 10 years old? Do you have a phone book in your house or a catalog? I know that like Uline sends me catalogs. They're hoping that I'm gonna buy these cleaning carts and things from them. And they've got lots of really cool stuff in there. But some of their catalogs are a couple of years old now, right? Are you hanging on to old magazines for whatever reason? I know that my dad is a real big gardener and because he's all big into seeds and gardening things and whatever, every time the seed catalogs come, I wanna hang on to them and give them to my dad, right? Are you holding on to stuff like that for someone else or old catalogs that probably the prices are outdated? This is the day that we take a look at that. All right, our time is up for today. I hope that this provoked some ideas. I hope it gave you some ideas of things that we could do to kind of streamline the clutter. I do wanna open it up to questions if you guys have any quick questions before we go. Does anyone else have any questions? I've got Sally and Jill here. Do you guys have any questions? I'm looking at our comments here. Nobody, somebody says they have no phone book but they have magazines. Someone else says, Joni says I've got pictures, negatives and slides. I need help. Let's do a whole session. We'll do a whole session on photos because I've got some pretty good ideas on those as well. Nancy says, this year I decided to toss all paper catalogs and phone books and now they get tossed as soon as they enter the home. Yes, go Nancy. I just gave away stacks of magazines on Buy Nothing and Local Senior Center. I love that. I love that she took the initiative to make a new rule for herself to say if they're coming in now, I know I'm not gonna use them. I'm gonna get rid of them right now in real time. So I love that. Thanks for sharing that with us Nancy. The aisles says old magazines, newspapers that I intend to read but I doubt but doubt I'll actually read. You know what? I've saved a lot of stuff for the best of intentions and because I didn't get around to it, I know I'm tossing it at the post office. Earlier in the conversation and I wasn't able to highlight it at the time but somebody made a comment that they sort the stuff at the post office and they don't even bring it home. They don't even put it in their car. They discard it right there at the post office. And I'm now getting to that point where I'm seeing the, I don't know, Costco gives you a catalog and the power company gives you a catalog and the Uline people give you a catalog and the seed catalogs and their fashion catalogs. There's a whole team of fashion people that keep thinking one day I'm gonna like discover fashion and they're gonna like be the first to sell me the goods and they don't make it home. So, you know, they stay at the post office and they're re-gifted to whomever wants them. I just leave them on top of the garbage can. So if anybody wants them, they can have them. Otherwise they go right in the trash. All right, I think that's it for today. I love the fact that you guys joined me today. I'm super excited that you're willing to spend a little piece of your afternoon here with me. We do have a private Facebook group. It's called hoarding world. You do not have to be a hoarder to participate but it's a great way to find an accountability partner. And so come on over and join us if you have not already. We're doing lots of before and after pictures. And so we're taking pictures of this is my clutter and I'm working on it and I need some inspiration and lots of people will clap for you and they'll encourage you on your journey. So come join us over there. We're here to help each other. And that's what this is all about. It's to bring awareness to the new versions and the best versions of ourselves and then to find some accountability. And while it's uncomfortable and we're having these tough conversations like, oh, I really love that and it's cute and I want it and it's meaningful and whatever we have these tough conversations because we can't hang on to everything forever. And there's this magical window between where your kids are moving away from home and you don't have the elder parents yet to care for that you have the energy to get rid of some stuff. But as the years go by, we have less and less energy and we have more and more responsibilities with grandkids and with elder parents and health issues and whatever that it becomes almost impossible to get rid of some stuff. And so I want for us to look our stuff in the eye and say, this has a purpose in my life. And if it doesn't, I'm gonna send it on its way. All right, that's it for today. Thank you so much for joining us and you guys have a great afternoon. You too. Thank you. Bye bye.