Photo by Rodrigo Comisarenco

The bulk of the clutter around our house is paper. My son, in 1st grade, comes home with an unbelievable amount of paper clutter, only small amounts of which is actually important. He brings home art and craft projects, pasted-together school work, pages pulled from a math book with the exercises he does in class, actual homework, spelling lists, newsletters from the school, and things to read and buy. It’s insane!

And then there’s the mail. I get bills and junk, catalogues, newspapers three days of the week, and important non-bill mail.

Sunday School sends home papers and cards and worksheets.

Boy Scouts, thankfully, has its own folder.

Seriously, though, what is a girl to do with all this extra, messy, easy-to-mislay paper? Sure, I could file it. My husband has threatened offered to clean out a drawer or two in our filing cabinet. But what has really been lurking around in the back of my head is the Drop Zone that David of Simple. Organized. Life. brought up the other day.

I’ve had the thought for a while – there needs to be a space for me to drop this stuff immediately upon entering my home. A quick breeze-through can sift through my son’s folders and determine what needs to be done with my son immediately, what needs to be looked at when things are calmer (read: when the kids are in bed), and what I can save to show his grandparents at a later point. I could quickly stuff the mail into to shred, to file, and to pay (bills) folders. My daughter’s stuff from Sunday School could get tucked away until we have a chance to work on it later – it never happens right after church.

My purse can get dropped by my chair without worry that I’ll be covering up something else I need to look at. I could set my book and notebook on the side table, where it belongs, IMHO, and not worry about sending coupons or other random scraps of paper or old mail flying. Or worse yet, covering it up and forgetting it.

Right now I’m dealing with the issue of how to separate things. I saw some neat organizers that would have been fun at Target, but they would have set me back $100. Money’s tight – I’m not shelling that much out. Occasionally I think that maybe I could make something myself with my non-existent carpentry skills. But then again, I don’t actually have those skills. Reality seeps in, and I change my mind.

I’ll probably end up with the solution my husband suggested, which is the soon-to-be-empty drawer from the filing cabinet. I don’t like this idea because it’s not out in the open where I can see it and get at it easily. I would prefer to have my solution somewhere obvious, but not obtrusive – like on the buffet in the kitchen, on a shelf by the front door or my chair, or as a small table in the dining room. But it needs to be inexpensive (dirt cheap), so I’ll make due with what I have, and perhaps I’ll stumble across a really cute, nifty solution soon.