Day 7 Purging Tips – Office Supplies

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We’re one week into the 31 Days of 10-minute Purging Tips Challenge. Congratulations for all you’ve accomplished this week. We’re working towards our goal to eliminate things we don’t need from our lives and home so that we can better enjoy life. Today we’ll examine and declutter the office supplies we have scattered through out our home. By clearing clutter, we’re making room for our best life.

I’m guessing that I’m not the only one that has a much too large collection of office supplies. I’m unable to resist the sales on office supplies in September after the back-to-school rush and in February after the new year organizing sales. I also have difficulty throwing away a pad of paper with one piece of paper or a favorite eraser that’s the size of a quarter. This is a purging area that is tough for me. 

Additionally,  I have office supplies organized and stored in multiple locations throughout my house. I have an office supply closet in my office, a junk drawer in my kitchen and my children have office/school supplies in their bedrooms.

Let’s start by taking a quick walk around to the spots you have office supplies stashed in your home. Spend a minute or less at each location to make a quick assessment of what you have. Pick one area to start purging. I’d recommend the spot in your kitchen or office that you can make a dent in today in about 10 minutes.  

Clearing Clutter – Tips for Purging Office Supplies

Grab the 6 purging bags you created earlier print out the free two page Purging Clutter Checklist and let’s head to the spot you selected. You may need a larger than normal bag for items to donate (if your stash of office supplies is anything like mine).

Take Everything Out- Remember that we’re devoting 10 minutes to purging today. Only take out as much of the office supplies as you can go through in that time. You can come back to the remainder of the supplies another time. Lay the items you take out on a table, desk or the floor.

Group Like Items Together – Quickly group like items together. Now that you’re a one-week purging veteran, you can group like items together as your’re taking them out (combining step one and two). Place paper together. If you have different types of paper (notebook, legal pad, graph paper), place them in separate piles next to each other. Place pens, pencils, and markers in one pile or separate piles depending on how you use them. As you group the items together, consider how you use the items. What works for me, may not work for you. Consider what you need for your personal situation.

Evaluate – Look at each group you’ve created. Are there any categories you don’t need? Are there categories that have more items than you really need to keep? This is the point where I remind myself that I can donate my extra office supplies to our local homeless shelter and help needy families. Keeping that in mind makes it easier for me to let some of my office supplies stash go (a euphemism for purging).

Purge – Remove items you don’t need to keep and place them in one of your 6 purging bags. Be tough as you purge the items. You don’t need to keep those pencils that are 2-3 inches long. You’re worth a full-sized pencil. Really.

Put Everything Away – Put the items you’ve decided to keep back away.

You don’t have to spend money to organize your newly purged office supplies. These 10 recycled office organizers will help you get everything neatly organized for free.

You can easily make your own Office Paper Recycling Bins.

Simple tips for How to Organize Tax Paperwork. 

Let me show you how organizing the study works in my home. 

You can watch your favorite TV show or movie while you organize your paperwork. I call this couch potato organizing paperwork and it makes the task seem less like work.

Congrats on completing an entire week of purging. We’re almost a quarter of the way done. Join me tomorrow for Day Eight in the 31 Days of 10-Minute Purging Tips challenge. Keep focused on our goal of simplifying our lives so we can enjoy them more fully.   Be sure to pin for later help in decluttering office supplies.

Find all my decluttering tips, printables and challenges in the table below. You can scroll though the table and look for ideas or search for specific ideas with the magnifying glass in the upper right-hand corner (on desktop). Click on the topic and then click through the specific article.