Dear Friends, Why do we hold on to this STUFF!
I know every flat surface in your home has piles of paper on it. Do you know what these piles are made of? It is usually junk mail! Did you know that 98% of the mail you bring in the house can be throw away. Take note next time you look at your mail. Here is a little story that I heard on a Rita Davenport Tape series from the 1980's. A friend of hers took a 3 month leave of absense from work. When he returned to his office, his desk was piled high with his mail from the 3 months. He was blown away by it all. So he bagged it up and put it on the credensa across the room and went to all the offices and talked to his co-worker to catch up on what all had happened during his absense. That night, the cleaning service came in and tossed the whole bag of mail in the trash. After he got over the shock of it being throw away, he finally realized that this had saved him so much time. He would have spent days or weeks going through each and every piece of mail. Most of which was not important anymore. During the next month he received a follow up letter, asking why he had not responded and one check had to be replaced. 2 items in that whole big bag were all that were of any value. Now, how many of these bags do you have stashed in your closets, how many drawers are bulging with this kind of paper clutter. This is just the unopened mail. Now for those piles of paid bills you are saving from the first day you married. WHY! They are not tax deductable. Toss those too. If you are in business you need to save any receipts for your expenses for 3 to 7 tax years. But that is all. I'll bet you have 20 years worth. It is time to purge these from your home. We do not keep any of our paid bills, except the ones that can be deducted on our taxes. We do save your payroll check stubs. We don't even save our personal bank statements. LOL we reconcile our check book and toss all of those too. When we remodeled we did save those checks, because they added to the cost basis of our home. If we ever sell it, we will need this. We are never going to sell. Why would I want to save the checks or the paid bills, If there is a problem, all I have to do is call the bank. When was the last time you did not get credit for something you paid by check. Now if you pay with cash, you need to save your receipts until you get your next statement to make sure that you got credit and then you can toss it. We keep a good check register. There is no telling what is your piles or black bags stashed under your beds. This kind of clutter is killing you. The guilt is tearing your soul apart. This has got to end. I really don't want you to go through these bags, but I know that you can not do this. If you can toss them without looking in them, I will find a way to reward you. I have a plan. Get a box, one of those paper boxes that reams of paper come in or a bankers box or a milk crate. Also get a trash can. If you have a fire place or wood stove then sit beside it and start burning. This is so cleansing. If you have a shredder, start shredding and donate the paper shreds to your animal shelter. As you go through each bag or drawer, toss all the trash and don't try to file this stuff, that will come later when you have a desk day. Just put it in the box. If someone asks you for something, you can honestly say, it is here somewhere. As you go through this stuff you are going to feel really bad and try to beat yourself up for not taking care of some of these things. Promise me that you will under your breath ask for forgiveness and release it. Promise yourself that this will never happen again. Do not try to do every bag at one time. This will be too much. Do a bag a week. You are going to find that once you quit hiding from all of this, you will have more respect for your money and your home. With this respect, you are going to find money, gift certificates, bonds, and probably some cash. When we respect our finances, we will bring more money into our lives. Just watch and see what happens. I am so proud of you for wanting to tackle this paper clutter monster. Eventually you will have it tamed and you will deal with it in a timely manner. Daily, biweekly, bimonthly, and monthly. No more waiting till January to get thing ready for your taxes. It will already be done. ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Journey from clutter List Website http://journeyfromclutter.com Members Only Page http://journeyfromclutter.com/MembersOnly/MembersArea.htm Unsubscribe: email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word 'unsubscribe' in the 'Subject:' field to be removed from the main list. To Unsubscribe from the Digest version of the list send the unsubscribe message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
