A paperless society?

Don't make me laugh!
In my household are 2 school-age children and 2 teachers, who both love to read. One of us is a chronic hoarder and never throws away even an envelope, the other is a papercrafter who likes to reuse and recycle. Our house is therefore as far from being a paperless zone as it is possible to be.

For most of the year, that is just fine by me, but today for some reason, it all got too much and I felt a need to purge and ratify. To clear my desk and cupboards so I can see the shelves. I do know it's the end of January and I can't therefore call this a New Year tidy up. Nor is it really a Spring Clean. But I just have to make the most of my spurts of domesticity whenever they hit me so I have spent a large part of Sunday and Monday
sorting and throwing away.

I binned 10 duplicate takeaway menus, just as a warm up.
I then went through my (not inconsiderable) pile of Christmas glossies and craft magazines, tore out the bits I wanted to keep and recycled the rest. I now have an empty magazine rack, which I know won't take long to refill, as I am a sucker for craft magazines.
P is given a large number of bottles in expensive gifts bags every Christmas as term-of-term pressies and we don't feel we can throw them away, but they are almost never reused. I sat down with my scissors in front of Top Gear yesterday evening and spent a productive hour gleaning ribbons, embellishments and tags from the 50 or so bottle bags and then threw away all but the best few.

Today I managed to file away all the work and household paperwork which had accumulated on my desk since the beginning of the school year. My box files of worksheets contained 10 copies of some, so I have kept just one copy of everything so I can close them.
We recieve electronic bills and manage our mony online, yet still I had 2 boxes full of utility bills and bank statements from last year, so I also did a belated New Year cull of all that stuff.

How satisfied do I feel now? Very. I have a recycling bin almost full to the brim and a clear desk to work at. I know where evrything is, which, given my recent lapses of memory is also very reassuring.
Next job?  - Sit P down to sort through his box of stuff. Not looking forward to that one!