In a magnificently stuffed antique shop in Royal Oak, Maryland (Eastern Shore) last week I was reminded of how much I love vintage office supplies.  They combine my love of all things patina, quality, age, and good design with office organizing. I gasped when amongst the thousands of odd and beautiful objects, a vintage brass letter sorter jumped into my arms.

If I didn’t have Evernote and still read paper magazines (as versus digital magazines on my iPad with the Texture app), I would have torn out this article on training to do pull-ups and it would have swiftly found it’s way into a pile. I would forever aspire to be able to do 5 pull-ups in 30 days, wondering where that darn article went.

Free shredding events are golden opportunities to unload your paper.  You may already have your shredding separated, but didn’t know where to take it, or the shredding is still mixed in with the keep, the recycle, and everything else you can think of.  Either way, don’t let one pass you by.

I once had a client who, upon dropping each piece of paper into the recycling bin, tore the piece in half straight down the middle.  She told me she didn’t know why she had to do it that way, but it’s just the way it was.  I’m all for whatever works, so I followed suit and did the same.

I took a bit of a newsletter hiatus towards the end of summer, but something about popular author Elizabeth Gilbert’s recent Instagram post was just the sign I needed to perk up for fall.  It’s simply a photo of her scribbled reminder that says, “Figure out paperwork” followed by #neverfigureditout.

I’d rather spend hours sorting and tossing than strolling the pretty aisles of the Container Store. Simply putting things in boxes is rarely the answer, but sometimes a good workhorse of a product opens up a world - or wall - of possibility.  This was the case when we corralled my client’s scattered collection of The Container Store’s Like-It Modular Drawers to effectively create a supply closet in an office that was in dire need of one.