On stuff

Tidy home office, nothing like my own, via

I just opened the mail and it got me thinking. I need to figure out a way for us to keep our mail under control.

Now, I am by no means a Type-A, super-organized lady. The two exceptions to this:

• My library. I can tell you exactly where any book is at any given time. Andy once moved a book, told me he moved a book, and then watched with amazement as I scanned the shelves, found it, and reshelved it correctly. (Oh, and I counted the other day: I own somewhere in the neighborhood of 450 books.)
• At work. I know where things belong and that's where they go, and I know what order I do things in and that's how they'll get done. Otherwise I'm worried I'll lose something important (like, you know, a law), or forget to do something important, and the world will end and I'll get fired.

I've always considered myself more of a piler than a filer, but my dedication to sites like Unclutterer and my discomfort with the state of my office at home seems to indicate a shift. The biggest source of my stuff-related stress is paperwork. We don't have a "staging area" to put stuff until it gets handled, so it gets left on the counter or table until we take care of it. I have a filing system for my financial paperwork, but most other stuff gets tossed on the desk in the office indefinitely.

I'm thinking of getting some of these desk trays for an open spot on the kitchen counter to corral shit-in-process, but I'm at a loss on how to sort all the weird stuff in the office. There's stuff from my college(s), Andy's college(s), paperwork on a car we sold a month ago, and so much more.

How the hell do you handle your paper? How do you decide what goes where and what to keep?