SPRING CLEANING Day Four: Sweeping Up the Paper Trail

I'm in no mood for more cleaning today.  Tonight when I get home, I want to sit down (for once), sip a hot latte, and enjoy a re-run of Charmed (please... don't tell anyone).

Thank goodness I'm good at multi-tasking... and thank goodness round four of SPRING CLEANING '09 doesn't require that I get off my rear.  Today I'm going address information overload.  

You'll need:

- To sit yourself down at your desk

- Materials for filing (folders, labels, a pen)

- A guilty pleasure tv show or two

- A paper shredder, scissors, or the ability to do this

- A wastebasket

Step One: Get comfortable.  Make sure the remote is in reach.

Step Two: Review and purge the following...

- Financial records.  Now that you're done with your taxes you can file last year's records.  Paperwork over a few years old can be shredded up and recycled.

- The inevitable build-up of magazines & catalogues.  Clip and recycle, or shelve them neatly.

- Instruction manuals.  No point in keeping manuals for a CD player I got rid of two years ago...

- While you're digging through your drawers, test your pens and markers.  Toss those that don't perform.

- Your computer desktop & folders.  If you can't see your desktop image anymore, it's time to label or tag images and put everything into folders.  Delete old files to clear up some HD space.

Ahh, that's much better.

Step Three: Devote your full attention to the telly.

And with that... the "cleaning" portion of our Spring Cleaning is over.  Almost anticlimactic, isn't it?  What's left to do?  Well jeez, did you think that the DONATE and SELL boxes were going to become a permanent fixture?