Extreme Minimalism: Week 16 – Paperwork Edition

We have a surprising amount of paperwork.

Despite trying to deal with all our paperwork electronically, we’ve still gathered enough of it to fill two drawers of a filing cabinet.

Quite a lot of that has been tax returns over the years, but I’d also filed away all kinds of other stuff. Mortgage info, homeowners insurance paperwork, instruction manuals and lots more.

A lot of this paperwork isn’t needed anymore which made it a perfect nominee for this week’s Extreme Minimalism. As it’s week 16, we had to find 48 items to get rid of.

I could’ve easily cheated with this and counted 48 pieces of paperwork for this week and had enough left over for at least two or three more weeks of minimalism.

Instead of doing that, I grouped the paperwork in folders by category. Receipts, old apartment lease, car lease from years ago, payslips from ages ago, etc.

There ended up being 23 folders, so I needed to find 25 more items. Shae had already put a few items in a box, so a few more minutes of rummaging around brought that total to 25.

Clockwise from top-left there’s:

• Small painting
• Watering can
• Windshield ice scraper
• 2 puzzle books
• 7 small light bulbs for a bedside lamp
• Desktop cornhole game
• 2 sets of headphone earpieces
• 4 sticks for covering furniture blemishes
• 2 packs of shelf holders
• 4 fridge magnets

You can follow our entire Extreme Minimalism process with all the posts below:

• Week 1: The Purge Begins – 3 items
• Week 2: More Kitchen Stuff Edition – 6 items
• Week 3: Man Drawer Edition – 9 items
• Week 4: Puppy Edition – 12 items
• Week 5: Wifey Edition – 15 items
• Week 6: My Clothing Edition – 18 items
• Week 7: Bathroom Edition – 21 items
• Week 8: Cupcake Edition – 24 items
• Week 9: Sort Of Cheating Edition – 27 items
• Week 10: Still Sort Of Cheating Edition – 30 items
• Week 11: Stationery Edition – 33 items
• Week 12: Random Crap Edition – 36 items
• Week 13: Easter In September Edition – 39 items
• Week 14: Easter In September Redux Edition – 42 items
• Week 15: Hot Stuff Edition – 45 items
• Week 16: Paperwork Edition – 48 items
• Week 17: Toiletries Edition – 51 items
• Week 18: Toiletries & Frames Edition – 54 items
• Week 19: Sugar & Spice Edition – 57 items
• Week 20: Nakey Edition – 60 items
• Week 21: My Preciouses Edition – 63 items
• Week 22: Everything Must Go Edition – Who Knows How Many Items?!