I have a thing about paper. I like to be buried in it. Surrounded by it. Bathed in sheets of white paper. Bombarded by piles of lined paper.
And don't get me started on notebooks that attempt to contain all that paper.
Someone send me a buoy.
No really. Send one.
I seem to enjoy, I must on some level, the company of paper.
When I organize, truly organize, I like to deal with everything. Not just the pretty labels and fun containers and totes. It is one thing to sort all the fun pattern paper and brads into neat little piles. Oh, and what to do with all these embellishments? But, for me to truly feel satisfaction I need to delve deeper and get to the bottom of an increasing problem I seem to have: gathering and keeping mounds and mounds of paper.
I have sheets dedicated to the search of genealogical records...which I worked on with gusto prior to moving to Idaho and I have an ENORMOUS stack to prove it. Sigh. It isn't that I'm not interested in that anymore, I just don't have the burning desire, right now. But that doesn't mean I want to just throw all that work and ideas away.
I have old calendars that I used when I journal. Typed notes taken from further notes that go into fairly good detail about events and holidays, also used for journaling pages.
I have scraps of this and torn pages of that. I have scrapbook layout ideas that need to be glued into my inspiration notebook. And I have pages and pages AND PAGES of old scrapbook magazine ideas I have torn out because I like the idea.
And I have ideas for pages I want to do for my kids, for my old heritage photos, and for stories I don't want to forget.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
When I organize the one thing I like to do when faced with a mountain in front of me and I feel unsure which way to go...is to sit on it for a few days. By doing so I allow my mind to go over ideas and turn possible solutions out. This is KEY for coming up with the right course of action. Because, not only does the idea need to work conceptually, but it also needs to be functioning.
Ding, ding, ding.
Functioning. That is at the top of the list when it comes to organizing. I can have everything neat and tidy and pretty and labeled but if it isn't FUNCTIONING the entire system is pointless and worthless.
So, as I am mulling over ideas and possible solutions when I do dishes, fold laundry, drive, do my crosswalk job, or watch television...I am also working the idea all the way through to see if it is indeed a functionable solution.
Here is an example. I have a large box that sits nicely on my shelves and it holds index cards...probably a thousand index cards...that I had originally thought I would use for my writing, but I didn't. So, I thought about other ways to use this box and thought maybe I would put all my scrapbook stories (let me side note here: scrapbook stories for me are those little bits of life that I want documented: what my first boss was like, my dad's morning routine, cheerleading camp, swimming at my uncle's pool, funny things the kids say and do, what the kids are into at a certain age, and so on. I want to capture the stories down because they may not necessarily fit into my traditional "chronological" form of scrapbooking. I have over 25 3-ring notebooks FULL of photos from my grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, parents, kids and everyone in between. I want to match some of the stories, in a perfect world, with some of those photos) on index cards and place them in the box.
How the idea, initially, COULD work:
1. The stories would be written (although painstakenly so because handwriitng all those notes seem daunting) on index cards.
2. The box is attractive and easily labeled.
However, the system is flawed in one area: it would not be functioning and I knew that way before I put the time and effort into the solution because I spent weeks thinking the idea through and realized it wasn't going to work.
1. Even if the cards are separated by theme they would kind of be out of sight, out of mind in that pretty box which is not even in the same vacinity as my photos.
2. Some stories are long and would not necessarily fit on one index card.
3. Rewriting could be a total drag.
4. Connecting a card with a photo for a layout didn't feel like it would flow easily enough.
Here is my list of what (papers) needs to be sorted and dealt with:
a) Genealogy. A ton of notes. A ton of fact-finding ideas. I plan to three-hold punch all the papers and put them into a 3-ring notebook, label it, and stick it on a shelf until I'm ready to start finding long-lost relatives from the eighteenth century again.
b) Scrapbooking ideas, journal prompts, and other clever ideas. Oh, do I have a bazillion of these silly things! But, for some reason I can't part with them all just yet. I plan to go through them and discard the ones I KNOW I won't use anymore because the idea no longer interests me (a perfect project while watching evening television). The rest I plan to also three-hole punch and place in a 3-ring notebook. This solution, however, is also not functioning unless I FORCE myself to look through there and GRAB an idea or two and put them to use on a REGULAR basis, but how? Hmmm, not sure yet. My goal here might be to dwindle the notebook down little by little until it is empty...that would seem satisfying.
c) Old jounraling notes. On first thought I felt I could simply throw these away. However, I think I may also place these into a 3-ring notebook and put a little further up on the shelf because this really isn't kept for usability but more for prosperity at this point. There MIGHT be SOME ideas and notes on these sheets and sheets of paper and old calendars that never made it onto a scrapbook page but I clearly value my time too much to attempt to find out for sure.
d) The stories. Still pondering this. I'll let you know when I've figured out a usable and functioning solution hopefully in the next day or so.
