Declutter · Home office & paperwork
How to declutter paperwork and a home office
The short answer
Paperwork takes half a day and the technique is speed. Sort into three piles, shred, keep and recycle, without reading anything closely, because reading is how a purge becomes an afternoon of nostalgia. Keep tax records five years from lodgement; almost everything older is just paper. Then the tech drawer, wiping old phones before they leave.
What order should I declutter the home office in?
- Sort into three: shred, keep, recycleDon't read anything closely. Reading is how a paperwork purge becomes an afternoon of nostalgia.
- Keep tax records five years from lodgementAlmost everything older than that is just paper.
- The tech drawerCables, adapters, old phones, dead batteries. The phones need wiping before they leave the house.
- Digital counts tooDownloads folder, desktop, the forty thousand photos. Different day, same principle.
What will I find, and where does it go?
Every home office declutter turns these up. Each has its own page, written for Australian Capital Territory where the answer changes by state.
- Paperwork & documentsDon't scan everything just in case. You'll spend a weekend digitising paper you'd never have looked at again, and end up with digital clutter instead.
- Electronics & screensACTNever the kerbside bin, ban or no ban — lithium cells inside old devices are a fire risk in collection trucks.
- BatteriesBatteries in kerbside bins are a leading cause of fires in recycling trucks and sorting facilities. Vapes are lithium batteries in a case and belong in no bin either.
Stuck on one thing?
Run it through keep or go, or read the eight thoughts that stall everyone. If it's going and it's big, need it gone in Canberra.
The house doesn't need to look like a magazine. It needs to work on a Tuesday.