ORGANIZING FROM WITHIN

I spent today organizing.  Organizing a lot.  But if you look around at my house, you might not be able to tell.  And that's because I tackled something that I haven't really focused on before - our paper storage. AKA the filing cabinet.  AKA where papers go to die.  Okay, that was a little dramatic.
At one time, all of my files were very organized.  That was when I was fresh out of college and had very few things to file.  Fast forward about eight years, and the originally organized system had been reduced to a mess.  I had a few files that were in great shape, mainly our medical bills and our taxes (kind of need that one to be in order), but everything else was a hot mess.  What also happened is that what 23 year old Katie thought was an important paper worth filing, 31 year old Katie realized didn't need to be kept after all.  So today was the day to tackle that.
There really wasn't a method to my madness.  I would just go down to our filing cabinet (which is in the storage part of our unfinished basement, which may be part of the reason I didn't like to spend much time in front of it), retrieve a chunk of stuff that I wanted to sort through, keep what was necessary, and shred the rest. Then repeat the process.  When I was done, this was my damage.

There is one bag hiding in this picture, but in reality, that's seven bags of shredded paperwork.  And a 2+ inch thick stack of file folders that were to be recycled.

Although there is not a lot of visual benefit to this task, it was really rewarding.  I think for me, when things get disorganized, whether it would be drawers, countertops, closets, etc., I get stressed.  Which is interesting, because I am definitely the main clutter causer in our house. But I have been working on cutting clutter for a long time (hello purge process), but this one task has been hanging over my head for quite some time.  And now it's done, and I feel SO MUCH BETTER! I feel like my whole house has been freshly cleaned and organized...even though it's definitely not.  But the weight is off my shoulders, and the next time my house is clean and organized, I'll be able to enjoy it that much more.
To make a productive day seem even more productive, I do have to report that I washed, dried, and/or folded five loads of laundry, ran to the supermarket, unloaded the dishwasher, and did a few other random things around the house.  It probably isn't much to some people, but seriously, I'm thrilled with myself.