Sometimes an office can get out of control. One day you innocently put down a piece of paper on the nearest surface, then another piece of paper, and before you know it you’ve run out of surfaces. Soon the piles of paper have begun migrating to the floor. Eventually your little corner of the world has turned into something that would send H. P. Lovecraft fleeing to the world of the Elder Gods.
My office had gotten to the point where nobody, including me, wanted to walk through the door. There might as well have been a sign at the entrance proclaiming “Here be Dragons”. Even the piles of paper were covered in piles of paper.
So today I enlisted the help of two hearty and intrepid (and clearly very loyal) friends. Together we battled the beast to the ground, fighting a long and mighty war against endless legions of old reports, expired receipts, announcements for events from 2003, and an alarming variety of random bric-a-brac. Bravely did we enter the fray, we few, we happy few, tossing aside fearsome mountains of paper like so much — well — paper.
Now I sit in an office all clean and shiny. My desk is clear, and so, I dare say, is my mind. My uncluttered soul, no longer ensnarled by an endless labyrinth of insidious mess, feels clean and alive, soaring on wings of a new found freedom. I face the future, proudly and unafraid.
But first, I’m just going to put down this one piece of paper…
“White: a blank page or canvas. His favorite. So many possibilities.”
— Sunday in the Park with George
Throw technology at the problem. Seriously. My weapon of choice is a Fujitsu ScanSnap, a sheet fed scanner that turns paper into PDF very quickly. I learned about it from my tax guy – if anybody knows piles of paperwork, it’s a tax guy.
I’ve even started sawing the spines off books and feeding them to the ScanSnap. I’ve cleared out several feet of shelf space. Wonderful.