A few hints for smaller office space. My office is about 5 ft wide with one file drawer and two levels of shelves. It's more than plenty for me. My computer is in my kitchen office and I am at the computer for hours at a time. I do not like the counter height. I find the desk height more comfortable. Each to his/her own. here are a few ideas for purging paper in you life. 1. Make all your bills paperless and automatic payment. I file the paper bills in the file drawer but I DO NOT need to pay the bill. I purge all paper bills after a few months. I am sure you do it for your mortgage, do the same for all your utilities. The only checks I write are things that I cannot do autopay. I write the due date on the calendar with the amt. Sometimes, I staple the loan bill on the calendar. I staple alot of the time sensitive paper that is absolutely necessary on the calendar, instructions for the kid's summer camp. etc etc. As you get rid of more mundane paper, you will realize that there is only a few pieces of paper that is absolutely necessary each month. 2. Get rid of all your credit cards except one. I buy everything with one VISA only. The VISA is paid in full automatically at the end of the month. I keep almost no receipts. Everything you buy is itemized at the end of the month and you know exactly where you money goes. Most big stores can retrieve your receipt if you have VISA number that you purchased the merchandise. This eliminates the need for receipt filing. (I keep the second VISA at home for in case of emergency, ie the first VISA is lost or if there is a problem, ie stolen number.... etc) 3. Have one large calendar on the wall that gets everything on it for visual reference and reminder. Hard to do without it... Try to duplicate it into the computer calendar. Use web based calendar so you can retrieve it from anywhere, ie work, someone else's home. Be mothodical about transferring it. 4. Keep important notes in the web based calendar program or e-mail program so that you do not have pieces of paper with info. Try to get the teachers to send you notes in the electronic format. Again, no paper. 5. you can chuck the local phone book and the yellow pages. It's on google. 6. You need to have the recycle bin close to the office. This is where the paper recycle is generated, as you sort through mail everyday. 7. Must have a printer near by for those times when you need to print out the mapquest instruction, recipes etc. 8. I do have a bulletin board that I tack a few paper things. 9. I have a shelf type of storage with glassdoor to hid the clutter. 10. I have a white board for the weekly schedule written in large letters. 11. I have one place where I keep all my season tickets to opera, concerts, plays etc. The dates are written on the calendar as soon as I get them. 12. Minimal office supplies needed. Stapler, paper clips (almost never used), pen, paper, scrap paper, pencil sharpner. Small baskets or drawers. 13. A little place for computer cables for the i-pod, digital camera, palm pilot etc, if this is your computer. \ 14. Shredder for financial info is a must. What I DO NOT keep in my kitchen office. My kids junk. They are not allowed to keep their toys, craft materials, markers, paper etc. You need storage for CDs. If you allow your kids to use the computer and they will have their games etc. Hope this helps. Go paper less!

I agree with justgotabme...if you are a pile person (I'm a pile person at work, but not at home)...cubbies and stackable trays are a great option to make the piles orderly. LOL! In my office at work, I have TWELVE stackable trays, stacked up on top of each other. The tray stack is somewhere between 3 & 4 feet tall, but I've got every tray labelled and I use them so much that I hardly have to look when I need to add to take out a stack of a particular category. I've duct-taped some of the trays together, and duct-taped some spots directly to the wall for support. It doesn't look pretty, but you get the general concept where you could build or buy trays or cubbies that look decent. Bottom line, it works. I still have my piles, and they are just all piled/sorted vertically. When a co-worker needs to get at my desk for something, my co-workers can rummage my piles and still not mess them up as long as the pile is returned to it's proper tray. At work with my piles, the key is to make sure each tray contains active paperwork that I need and use...and is not to be confused with something that should be in it's proper project binder or in a file cabinet somewhere. Before you build or invest in something more permanent, you could probably buy some cheap trays or creatively make some cubbies or trays out of cereal boxes around the house and experiment with it before you commit.

What a nice old thread! Flylady was a wonderful help to me, and it is so true how those ideas can internalize. I'll add another technique that I've found helpful and have used with others, too: Start with a vision of how you want your space to look and feel, and hold every future decision up to see whether keeping something is compatible with the vision. And when you don't know where to start, and when you can't seem to decide to let go of the object in your hand, then start grouping like things together. All the books, vases, kitchen gadgets, ornaments, magazines, old letters, tools, art prints, all the stuff to do with particular hobbies/craft stuff. Then do a reality check. Do you have enough bookcases, really? And if you don't, do you really want to sacrifice some more space and money in order to keep ALL these books? Or can you let go of the ones that you not only never read, but will probably never read? Are their favorites that you no longer go back to anymore that you can share with others? Strive to keep the best and most meaningful among what you have while letting go of the least meaningful. Decide what amount of your storage space you can allow, and pare down to that amount, if possible. Rinse and repeat, as it were. Sometimes it helps to see the vast amount of things we own in each category, squarely faced with the amount of space we have to store them. Try to keep the end goal in mind - things like clear walkways, walls with pictures instead of towers of storage units looming over us, for example. Refine your goals even more: if you really want to craft, you need to clear enough space to make it easy to both get out and put away your craft stuff. If it is a hassle to get stuff out or put it away, you are unlikely to use it, or to put it away to keep that nice, pretty space you want. So something needs to go, whether it is your dream of crafting if it isn't truly your heart's desire, or the extra furniture of Aunt Mabel's that can only live directly in front of the crafting storage area. Keeping your end-vision in mind while realistically assessing your stuff for the best of the best AND your storage capabilities can help keep you on track....because you learn to see unnecessary things as hindrances. It is easier to let go of a hindrance than something that is "possibly useful."

You can build a large message center into your kitchen, if you have room, which includes cork board, and clear pockets on the insides of the doors for the menus and lists, etc. It sounds like it's mostly school related. Do you have room in a family room or den for it? Maybe a cabinet with file pockets and a bulletin board? This is meant for computers, but would work for sorting the school stuff too: Or you could have a hot file sorter and a write on magnet board: You can use cubbies for each kid's detritus plus cubbies for supplies. Mount them on the wall, if you have a wall, and when the kids grow up paint them, and put cool vases and objet d'art in/on them. Or you could go full on Pottery Barn: My kitchen clutter is mostly things like glass cloches that are inconvenient to put away so sit too long on the counter... What's great about my new kitchen is that there's very little space for things to accumulate. If I tear out catalog pages I have to transfer them to my desk in another room or there's nowhere to eat breakfast. If I take down cookbooks to browse through, I have to put them away or shuttle them around the island because they're in the way. I guess I lucked out. There's a little extra counter space for kitchen items clutter, but unlike the mound of unsorted paper I had in the old kitchen, my new kitchen tends to shed paper quickly. I think that's because all that stuff got relocated to the desk during the remodel and it stuck!