Paper or Plastic?

While googling stock images for an upcoming workshop I stumbled on this picture.  It sparked a memory of the surprise I'd felt upon learning that some of my fellow writers WRITE THEIR BOOKS BY HAND.

Yep.  You heard me.  In this day and age many busy, prolific, professional authors write their first drafts, in their entireties, using pencil and paper and only then do they type them into a modern electronic storage device.

While I am a lover of all things paper - as several of my previous posts hereupon will attest - I can't imagine working in that fashion! Not because its wrong, or bad, or double handling, or any more or less inefficient than the curly-wurly, roundabout way that I write. It's simply not how I get that kind of stuff done.

And it got me to thinking.

We all have different ways of getting stuff done.  "To-do" stuff.  Organisational stuff.  Productive stuff. And while getting stuff done seems like something we should choose to do in the most direct way possible, our reasons aren't necessarily thus (see my curly-wurly, roundabout writing method above).

Sometimes it comes down to how we've been taught.  Sometimes we've gone looking for better ways to use our time.  Sometimes it comes down to what feels best.  Sometimes its all about security.  Sometimes its simply by way of habit.

And - harking back to the picture that started this stream of consciousness - its funny how the methods we employ in getting that stuff done so often comes down to this:
 
PAPER...OR PLASTIC?

So, for fun, let's see where you fall on the all important spectrum, shall we?

    *    Spending: cash or credit?

    *    Writing a letter: notepaper or email?

    *    Shopping Lists: note on fridge or app?

    *    Keeping track of appointments: paper calendar or phone calendar?

    *    To do lists: random scraps of paper/notebook or app?

For the writers among us...

    *    First draft: paper or computer?

And the readers...

    *    Books: paperback or ebook?

Upon taking this quiz myself I find that I often do both. Talk about double handling!

Have you found any ways to do it better?  To stay more organised?  To get stuff done?

Paper Girl

by Sharon Archer

 
I collect paper.  I’ve collected it for years.  An article here, an article there.  I have great mounds of it, box files of my old lecture notes, filing cabinets with suspension files groaning with interesting snippets of information.
  
But I'm turning over a new leaf - I’m Organising!   But this leaf turning is a slow process... and not easy.

So what prompted this latest round of Organising?

Well, I dropped my bulging folder of recipe snippets!   I'd been collecting them for a long, long... long time.  Gathering them up and then trying to find the one I'd been looking for in the first place, made me look at them - really look at them.  And I realised... it was time to cull!


From 1981, in February a collection of cakes and biscuits and in June two pages of marvellous mince recipes.  Thirty-one years ago when I liberated them from a New Idea magazine, I must have intended to try them.  But I haven't.

From 1983, in May a tear-out leaflet on prepare ahead dinner parties and in August a page on bread - I haven’t tried these either!

A wad of undated delicacies and then a leap forward to 1996 for Warming Winter Wonders and 1999 for a complete herbs special.  All untried.


I've taken stabs at disposing of some of these before but then hesitated at the last moment... after all, I might suddenly need this recipe or that one.  But that's where my new leaf comes in ... I am
actually disposing of these pages... after I've blogged about them today!

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure they're all fabulous recipes but if I haven't got around to trying them out some time in the last ten to thirty years then the chances are, I'm not going to!

So now, they're gone into the recycling.  It’s just a tiny step... I have knitting patterns in another drawer... and gardening snippets somewhere else.  But this recipe clear-out is a good start, don’t you think?!

So what about you? 
Are you a hoarder?
Do you fight it or embrace it?
Do you have rules to keep it from turning into clutter? 
Any tips to share?