July 30, 2024
Ep. 70: So Much Paper! How to End Paper Overwhelm and Get Organized with C.Lee Cawley
Do you find yourself drowning in a sea of papers, from junk mail to important documents, and everything in between? You're not alone! In this episode of OMG Teach Me, Certified Professional Organizer C.Lee Cawley joins Cheryl to dive into the world of paper organization with tips, tricks, and a few laughs along the way.
We'll explore the astonishing fact that 100 million trees are cut down each year for junk mail, and why we're all still juggling between paper and digital. C.Lee shares heartwarming stories of how getting organized can lead to surprising and positive life changes. Plus, you'll learn about the innovative KARMA method of paper management that can help you tackle those piles of paper step by step.
Join us for a fun and engaging conversation that will leave you motivated to clear the clutter and make space for what truly matters. Tune in and let's conquer that paper overwhelm together! 🌟
Next steps:
- Join C.Lee in her next free masterclass in August 2024! Sign up here.
- Connect with C.Lee on Instagram.
- Connect with Cheryl on Instagram - and check out all the podcast recommendations and sponsors at www.cherylpfischer.com/recommendations.
Cheers to a desk that you can actually see and use! ;)
Text me to ask a question - I'll answer on the podcast!
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She had papers everywhere.
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Older woman, retired, single woman.
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And so her, these were the financial papers, and she was overwhelmed and she needed to gather up her financial information to take it to a financial advisor.
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What if there are things we never had the opportunity to learn?
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We've all been to school or training, but there are things they never taught us that actually make a powerful difference in life.
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I'm here to share with you all the pieces you've been missing: mindset, health, success, and more.
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And we'll all learn together from guests along the way.
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We may not have learned it the traditional way, but oh my goodness, let's keep learning how to do things differently.
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OMG, hello my friends.
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Here we are, and this is gonna be an interesting episode because speaking for myself, being organized when it comes to paper has always been an issue.
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In fact, my husband and I joke that we keep our house clean, it's neat, we don't have like stuff everywhere, we're kind of minimal except the paper.
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So it has been for 20-some years an issue for us, and maybe it's an issue for you.
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And in fact, as I'm recording this, I am looking across the room and seeing stacks of files from my mom's house for things I'm supposed to be doing for her.
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So I have with me Seely Collie, who is a certified professional organizer.
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There are fewer than 350 certified professional organizers worldwide.
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And she uses her advice and instruction to transform living spaces and personal lives of thousands of people.
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So that sounds amazing.
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Right now, her mission is bringing order to cluttered desks and overwhelmed minds with her signature course, The Paper Cleanse, and she'll mention that, I'm sure.
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And she lives near me, just outside of DC.
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And this is my favorite part, Seely considers herself indoorsy.
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Yes.
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We were just talking about that.
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Yes, indoorsy.
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I love it.
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Well, welcome.
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Well, thank you so much, Carl.
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I'm so excited to be here.
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And you know, this is one of my favorite topics because it is something that plagues us all.
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Or most.
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I I mean, truly, I'm not even making that up for this podcast episode at all.
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Paper has been always a thing.
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So we're gonna solve it, right?
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Yes.
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Well, let's start with your story to a certain extent.
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I always, my listeners know I always do this, but I always find that we create things in our lives to really solve our own problems or because they have meaning to us.
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So, how did you end up working as an organizer and then especially with this focus on dealing with paper?
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So I actually have a BFA in costume and set design.
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So this is not a natural path, but I realized that I wasn't a brilliant costume designer, but I could get things done on time and on budget.
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Why?
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Because I was organized.
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I went to we went and lived in England.
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Uh, my husband got his PhD and taught at Cambridge University, and I worked in a high-end retail boutique and we busted out sales numbers.
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Am I an amazing salesperson?
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No.
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I was organized, right?
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I could get the inventory done and focus on clients and do client follow-up.
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And so when we moved back to America and my daughter went to kindergarten, I was funny, like, wow, what should I do with my life?
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What should I be now that, you know, I don't want to be a stay-at-home mom, I want to do something.
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And I realized the things, the the one thread that had made me successful as a costume designer or a retail manager or a personal assistant was that I was organized.
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And I thought, wow, and this was just this was in 2003, right?
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So it was just when, you know, we lived near DC.
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I'd go to a dinner party with my husband, who's a lawyer, like every other person in DC, and I'd say, Oh, I'm an organizer.
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And they'd be like, Oh, for which labor union?
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Oh gosh.
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No, no, I do closets and pantries.
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Oh, and then the wives would be like, What do you do?
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Right?
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So it was just when you were starting to realize that this was actually could be an a way to live.
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And what I also realized is that it just it wasn't just that I was organized, it's that I could teach others how to be organized.
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And the real success was when I'd set, you know, I'd do the decluttering, set up a system, and people would be fine.
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Like they'd graduate and I wouldn't hear from them again.
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And then I knew that what I set up for them was super successful.
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So that's kind of how I came to do it.
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Plus, it was something I could do as my own business around my daughter's, you know, school hours.
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My husband was traveling crazy hours, so a real kind of full-time job wasn't really didn't make sense.
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So I could work between nine and three school hours, or you know, take the day off and go volunteer as a chaperone for the zoo.
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So it was a good flexible concept as well.
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And it served, it served me well.
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And that was when my daughter started kindergarten in 2003.
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And so yeah, over 20 years later.
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So I've got a lot of experience.
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Excellent, excellent.
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And what really stuck out to me there is this idea of being able to teach people to do it themselves.
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Because I mean, that's my first love is teaching.
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That's why we're here, honestly.
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And it's not something that everybody knows how to do.
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So kudos to you that you figured out how to do that.
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Yeah.
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Thank you.
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So, speaking of teaching people to get better at this, why do we even end up in this position where we're overwhelmed by paper?
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How does this happen?
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So, I I do believe, Cheryl, that there's a real divide.
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So I have a 26-year-old.
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She has a big job.
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She's director of product for a ed tech nonprofit.
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She doesn't even own a printer, right?
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She is a digital native.
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I am a digital dinosaur.
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And that I think is really, you know, I still love paper.
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Like I've got my notes here.
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I I it's a tangible thing, and that's how we grew up.
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Because we grew up before the digital age when if you needed information, you got out your almanac or your dictionary or thesources, right?
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It's so so that's kind of part of it.
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Also, there are 300 pieces of junk mail per year per person currently in America.
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100 million trees are cut down each year for junk mail.
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So even if you don't have a printer, if you receive mail, then you may may be inundated with it.
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And I do think that there that some of us just need we want to read a real book, we want to highlight our notes.
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We are, you know, we still like a real newspaper occasionally.
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So I think that the that's why we're still in this this kind of in between.
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All of us have one foot in paper still, and then one foot in digital.
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Yeah.
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And sometimes it's just like, where did I see that?
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Was it online?
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Was it, you know, it's like there's so much information coming at us.
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So that's why I think we still have a problem with paper.
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And you know what?
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It's a good point.
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If we even say just a problem with information coming at us, this I fully agree.
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This, I don't know where I saw that thing as a problem.
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Or I know she sent me the message, but where the heck was it?
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Instagram, Facebook message, text, email?
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I don't know.
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Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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It it it's just it used to be so much simpler.
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And that's why I think we're really feeling this overwhelm and overload.
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And and and it manifests itself like you you refer to your mom's papers, right?
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You may not have those files for home repair, but your mom does.
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So yes, and it's funny that as we were, well, not we, as I was sitting here getting ready for this episode, I really didn't even put that together, and that probably deserves a whole nother episode, to be honest.
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Helping our aging parents.
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Yes.
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But I went to her house and I brought home all these files because I need to work on her finances for her, and they're they're sitting there cluttering up my house.
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So, yeah, good point.
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That's a whole nother set of paper.
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And and truly, actually, it's funny that you should say that because one of the results that a a few of my students have had, one of my students exactly, she had papers everywhere.
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Older woman, retired, single woman.
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And so her, these were the financial papers.
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And she was overwhelmed and she she needed to like, well, she hadn't retired, she needed to gather up her financial information to take it to a financial advisor.
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So she had to organize the papers first.
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She didn't even know where to find the information because she was getting paper statements and things.
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And after she worked with me, she was able to do that.
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She took her her sheath of papers to her financial guy, and he's like, You can retire tomorrow and be absolutely.
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And it was because she had to get the papers together before she could go there, right?
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That was A to B.
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So I think it's wonderful that you're helping your mom in that way.
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Yeah, isn't that interesting that you might actually not only will your house be a bit neater and your brain maybe be a bit neater, but you might get some good news out of this.
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Absolutely, absolutely.
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Okay, so I know that those of us listening who have this paper issue are fully tracking what you're talking about, absolutely recognizing that we have piles and piles and it's hard to keep track of.
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Let's start with baby steps.
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If somebody wants to tackle this problem, is there a way that you could advise that we would even just get started with you know simple steps?
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Absolutely.
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So I have kind of some uh some intangible ideas, right?
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And and the first is that you know, good and done is better than perfect and none.
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And I see this over and over again.
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People don't get started because they don't, they want it to be perfect, and they don't even know what perfect looks like.
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So it's just better to avoid that, right?
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So one of the things I'm gonna say is, you know, it doesn't have to be A plus work.
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I really encourage B minus work.
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Yes.
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Because any pro you know, slow progress is still progress, and any progress is better than nothing.
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So that's kind of like the intangible.
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The other thing is you need to trust yourself, right?
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So Barbara Hemphill is a renowned organizer.
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She's trademarked the phrase clutter is nothing more than postponed decisions.
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And that's exactly what it is, right?
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Anything that's clutter, you haven't decided if you're keeping it, and if you're keeping it, where it goes.
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So until you're you can start making those decisions, but people don't trust themselves.
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They, oh, what if I need it?
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Oh, I you know, and so one of the things I encourage people to do is really trust themselves and and and in and ask themselves questions.
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Okay, so what if you threw that piece of paper away?
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Could you find that information someplace else?
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You know, is it going to be valid?
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Is it still, you know, those types of ideas?
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So trusting yourself, and of course, you know, you need to learn which questions to ask yourself, but trusting that you can make decisions.
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Recently I had a Q ⁇ A with my members, and I said to them, who had all gone through my course, is there any paper?
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Here we are a year later, because we had like a little graduation, that you throw away that you regret throwing throwing away.
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And of the dozen or more people on the Zoom call, not one of them could think of one piece of paper that they regretted throwing away.
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Wow.
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So, because they did it in a purposeful, logical way that they could trust the decisions they made.
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So then, tangible ways, right?
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Truly, if you want to do this, like clear your desk off, clean it completely, like get out the wet wipes.
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I can't tell you.
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Uh, you know, I had a student, she cleared her desk off, she did my method.
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She found not one pair of readers, but she found 10 pairs of readers.
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Very, she said she posted a picture of all 10 of them lined up, buried in the paper.
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And she's like, Well, no wonder I can't ever find any.
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If I find a pair, she just kept buying them at the dollar store, right?
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So, so clean your desk off completely.
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Give yourself a fresh start, give yourself space to work, right?
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Yeah, and create some type of collection container, someplace that you can collect those papers until you can deal with them, right?
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That's a hangout spot spot until they find a home.
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Get make sure you have a good chair, make sure you have good lighting, right?
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Without those things, it's so hard.
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You are gonna want to sit at your desk to sort and work because your chair is uncomfortable.
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And this kind of comes from COVID times.
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You know, people just had to like make it work, right?
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Yes.
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But then they realized when they were at their dining room table, they had a lot of space, they had a big window, they had good light, and maybe that was what they were lacking the whole time.
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So kind of those tangible things can really make a difference in you know, setting up your environment to be a uh to work for you instead of against you.
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That's a great point because otherwise I think we sort of maybe stick ourselves in a corner like it's a dungeon or something, right?
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Oh my gosh, Cheryl, I can't tell you how many people like, no, you need to find, even if it's just you use your kitchen table and you have a little rolling cart that holds everything so you can clear it off for dinner.
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If you're gonna, if if you want to be on the main level where there's light and warmth, don't send yourself to the basement because you won't be productive.
00:14:26.320 --> 00:14:29.600
So, so yeah, that's a that's a huge issue, absolutely.
00:14:29.600 --> 00:14:32.720
So those are just a couple of things, just to get yourself started.
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Give let yourself do B plus B minus work and give yourself a fresh start.
00:14:38.240 --> 00:14:44.159
Yeah, I'm glad you said B minus work because I am a huge, huge fan of that principle in general.
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We stop ourselves in life from doing so many things because we want to do it, and I'm a definitely an offender in this area.
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So we want to do it perfectly.
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So I'm glad you said that too.
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Absolutely.
00:14:55.200 --> 00:15:07.919
I love a bit of sparkle and I love to feel a little bit girly, but I always struggled with manicures because either I would mess it all up before it was dry or the gel would be too hard on my nails.
00:15:07.919 --> 00:15:12.879
Thank goodness my sister introduced me to ColorStreet Dry Nail Polish.
00:15:12.879 --> 00:15:16.720
I can create a new manicure in minutes and I don't have to let it dry.
00:15:16.720 --> 00:15:23.279
Find ColorStreet at omgteachme.com slash recommendations and check it out for yourself.
00:15:23.279 --> 00:15:34.240
Well, let's take it further than baby steps then, because you have created a method that you call the karma method of paper management.
00:15:34.240 --> 00:15:36.559
So tell us a little bit about that.
00:15:36.879 --> 00:15:40.720
So earlier, like, well, how did you fall into specializing in paper?
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And I didn't.
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It's just that that was the need.
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I would go to everyone's homes and they're like, oh, can you do my pantry?
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Oh, and then my paper.
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I mean, it's especially in the early 2000s, before we we became much more digital.
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There was every single person, papers coming in from school, papers coming in from work, papers coming in from conferences, and so and then there's the paper you pay for, magazines and newspapers, right?
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And then your mom sends you something.
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And so, you know, I'd rather stay in a kitchen or a pantry because tangible items, you can get a lot more big results in a shorter time with tangible items.
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Paper can take forever because if you're doing it right, you really need to look at every piece of paper, right?
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You know, and that's a lot of mental effort and decision making.
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But I realized early on that I needed, I moved to America from England, and we lived in a fellow's flat, we didn't have a car, you know, I had national health insurance.
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I had very few papers.
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I came to America and oh my gosh, health insurance, buying a house, buying a car, you know, all you know, chimney sweeps, landscaping, babysitters.
00:16:52.480 --> 00:16:54.720
It was I I was inundated.
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I was inundated, and I thought, oh my gosh, I'm an organized person.
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This was before I even started my business, and I can't manage this.
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So I came up with a really easy system for myself.
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And then when I became an organizer, I realized, oh, well, let me tell you what I do.
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I don't know if it's gonna work for you.
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And person after person, where I was like, yeah, that worked, that really worked.
00:17:15.119 --> 00:17:27.359
So it's the karma of paper management, and it stands for K-A-R-M-A, and the first K is CRUD, and I know I spelled it incorrectly, but I had to for my acronym because I mean what's more important?
00:17:27.359 --> 00:17:29.440
Every organizer loves an acronym.
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So the CRUD is the first thing you need to make those decisions on what you're going to keep.
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The less you keep, the less you have to manage, right?
00:17:38.000 --> 00:17:45.759
So, really, that means there's really only four categories of paper, and all papers fall into one of these categories.
00:17:45.759 --> 00:17:52.960
They can move between categories, but it's A is action, action items or active projects.
00:17:52.960 --> 00:18:01.119
R is reference material, and some people think about that as filing, but I want you to think about it as what you would actually reference.
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M is memorabilia, paper-based memorabilia is huge.
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And the final A is archive.
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And those are kind of our like cover our ass kind of papers, right?
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And what kind of sets my system apart from other people, lots of people have action or you know, fat file act toss or things, is that I really acknowledge that the memorabilia is a huge part of our paper clutter.
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And people don't know what to do with it.
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