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Ask Vicki a question. Vicki
Norris monitors
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 Restoring
Order to Your Home
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CBN.com –
Are you slowly being buried by a mounting
pile of newsletters, trade publications,
magazines, catalogs, and other reading materials?
Do you promise yourself that you’ll get to them
“soon” and yet month after month they keep adding
up?
Many of us know that our reading pile is
totally out of control yet we don’t feel like we
can part with it. Why do we hold onto all this
information?
Here are some of the reasons I’ve discovered
why our self-assigned reading keeps growing:
- Guilt: We realize that
we’ve spent good money on these publications or
newsletters, and we want to “make good” on our
investment. We feel wasteful throwing them away.
- Perceived Value: We have a
hard time parting with the valuable information
that lies within our unread volumes, especially
if it is specialized information (like business
savvy or technical information).
- Being a Resource: We like
to be seen as a resource to others; we like to
connect people with information. Malcolm
Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point
calls people “Mavens” who love to resource
others with information. Mavens often collect a
lot of information for their reference and the
reference of others. They use information as
influence and can’t resist acquiring new,
helpful information.
- Taking a Break: When the
reading material we collect is of a personal
nature, we keep it around to give ourselves a
treat. We promise ourselves that we will peruse
that home decorator catalog or lifestyle
magazine for “ideas” or “inspiration” or some
“rest and relaxation.” If our busy lives prevent
us from getting to the pile, we feel cheated out
of our mental getaway so we keep waiting for
that promised future break.
Whatever our reasons are for collecting reading
materials, at some point we become buried in them
and we reach a breaking point. We no longer want
to feel harassed with guilt and broken promises to
ourselves, so we pitch the whole pile.
Here’s a sensible approach to dealing with your
reading pile:
- Go through your piles of reading materials
and sort them by type.
Literally make a pile of Fast Company
magazine or all your Better Homes and
Gardens magazines or hobby newsletters, or
whatever it is you collect, with the newest on
top and oldest on the bottom.
- Once you have orderly piles of each
publication, make a list of all
those subscriptions you receive—you might be
surprised at how many you have.
- Decide what you’re getting
from each of them (ex: professional development,
“me” time, etc) and note it next to the name of
the publication.
- Prioritize your list in
order of importance to you.
- Ditch the deadwood! Take
any publications you did not rate as very
important to you and immediately put them in the
recycle pile.
- Critically assess the rest and get
realistic about how much time you
really can dedicate to reading
- Cut your losses. Choose a
date (like one year ago) and delete anything
before that time.
- Going forward, give yourself a
statute of limitations. Set a protocol
for shelf life of a magazine (“if I haven’t read
it by, then I’ll let it go” and “I resolve to
only keep 12 months of any publication on
hand.”)
- In order to prevent yourself from getting in
this situation again, you’ll have to
take a few preventative measures:
-
Get off junk mail lists
- Schedule daily or weekly time to read so
that you can handle incoming
- Schedule a quarterly or bi-annual purge,
where you agree with yourself to prune back
the deadwood if you haven’t been able to
adhere to your protocols.
As summer is coming to a close, take a few
hours and dig out of your growing “to read” pile.
Your reward will be tremendous relief, and the
ability to manage your incoming materials in the
future.
Adapted from: Restoring
Order™ copyright © 2006 by Vicki Norris (available
now at
www.RestoringOrder.com and in July 2007as
Reclaim Your Life™. Copyright © 2007). Published
by Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, OR. Used by
permission.
About the Author: Vicki Norris is
an expert organizer, business owner, speaker,
television personality, and author who inspires
people to live out their priorities. Norris is a
regular on HGTV’s nationally syndicated Mission:
Organization, and is a recurrent source and
contributor to national lifestyle publications
including Quick & Simple magazine, Better Homes &
Gardens, and Real Simple magazine. Norris is also
author of Restoring Order™ to Your Home, a
room-by-room household organizing guide. |
