Paper waste

[franceslievens]

Sifting through the clutter on my desk, I find print-outs of exam questions from my previous teaching job. Jesus. Fucking. Christ. The paper you accumulate when you do the bulk of your work at home is terrible. Most of this stuff I have on my computer as well. And a back-up on an external hard drive. Instead I hold on to the hard copies, because I might want to use them anew, and then I don't have to print them again, saving ink and paper.
But there's too much of it. Bits of paper here, pages and memos there. No wonder I sometimes forget when we have a day off: an important piece of paper generally looks the same as the less important ones. Maybe I should just chuck it all out and rely solely on this piece of electronics. Or maybe I should consider moving house: nothing is as good to get your ass in gear when it comes to throwing unnecessary clutter away than the knowledge you'll never open certain boxes once you've stashed them in the attic of your new place. So you better get rid of them before your arms hurt.

Comments

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

I think I spent about a week sorting out all the print-outs and handouts and photocopies I'd accumulated over the last school year. But now I've got lots of great folders, ring-binders etc. full of teaching material at my fingertips in those shiny and transparent whatever-their-name-is-thingies and it's all filed under different subjects, topics, age groups etc. My colleagues love me for it, because it means that exchanging stuff and planning lessons together is a lot easier.

I wonder how long I'll keep that up - usually all my best intentions get lost in my every-day chaos and then I need to spend time in the summer holidays getting everything organized again.

I've got a huge green agenda with all my important school dates and a page for every day and space for lists of pupils and so on. Should I lose that, I'd be screwed.

Also, I always keep stuff longer than necessary. I threw away the tax bills for my first car, which I sold about ten years ago, just this summer! I didn't even know I still had them filed away.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

I'm a mess when it comes to filing. Having lived on two places at once while at uni, hasn't helped much. I used to file a bit at my parent's place, a bit at my uni place... I'm still dragging that along. There is no system in my filing. Also having started in secondary, then taught in primary school, than back to secondary school and now finaly somewhat fixed in primary school... it doesn't do much good for the filing systems. I've got a filing cabinet, that's meant to keep things tidy. I simply put my stuff in there in those plastic thingies you're refering to, by grade. The folders are overflowing right now. But I cleaned up the mess.

My computer otoh is something else altogether. I spent literaly hours at the start of this month to get everything organised in neat folders, because I couldn't find my files, or didn't even know what most of the files were. So now I have folders for the age groups and within those folders for the different subjects I taught already. Whenever someone asks me something I simply write them a cd. ;-)
Actually I use my computer to find stuff in my filing cabinet.

Still I've got folders and pictures sitting on my desktop... Those should be imported into iPhoto, but organising stuff in there is a pain in the ass, if you don't use a digital camera and simply import pictures.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

I may have overstated my filing expertise - there is still a lot of stuff that isn't filed away properly. The problem is that I'm a bit of a hoarder and rather messy. It takes a lot of effort to maintain a semblance of order around my desk. Whenever I hear about those people who live in completely overstuffed houses with clutter absolutely everywhere, I get really scared that I could become one of them.

The boyfriend experienced the joy of cleaning out an appartment like that with a collection of about 300 empty bottles of vodka and tons of rubbish etc. because one of his father's tenants just disappeared.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

I'm a hoarder, but not in that kind of sense. P. has lived in apartments all his life, so wants to get rid of stuff as quickly as possible. Old newspapers, for instance, survive a week and then it's in the bin they go! I simply seem to keep bits of paper that were meaningful two years ago, but don't make any sense right now.