A system for the scary papers

Systems. Systems. Systems.

People come to me asking for systems, and I've created thousands of them in my 22 years as a Professional Organizer. Some systems are meant to be permanent, while others are temporary. It's the temporary systems, like the one pictured here, that put out immediate fires.  It's the permanent ones that keep those fires from igniting again.

As my clients and I organize together, sometimes our work begets more work... I then have to keep the overwhelm and panic to a minimum by making their new to-dos as approachable as possible. (By "new" I mean "put-off.") We have to wrangle these to-dos simply and immediately.⁠ Later we can make them beautiful.

Here is one such system. We found many small do-dos in her piles, such as follow-ups and bills to pay. Those are in another system. This folder here holds the more time-consuming and complicated projects that she does NOT want to do! Suspecting they were lurking in the piles served as a pile repellant. In her case, the big avoided projects happened to all be financial and insurance-related.

Organizing (especially paper) forces us to face life, which is why the process is often avoided. Buried with the papers you might find painful or complex projects that have been ignored for years. For better or worse, you'll unearth them as you are digging through the bins and piles. In doing this, clients feel like they are finally facing what needs to be done to move past the past. ⁠ Her work didn't end with that session. In some ways, it was just beginning. But, this client told me that it felt good to finally face it. ⁠

Can you relate? What would it feel like to see all of your put-off projects gathered in one space? Frightening? Do-able? Please share in the comments.