Today, I am bringing back the Organize 365 lead researcher, Sarah Dyson. We are sharing about our soon to be published literature review scheduled to be in the The Journal of the Arkansas Psychological Association. 

We share how we needed to define a shared language in order to collect data and discuss solutions. The submitted article is titled The Role Women play in the 21st Century Home and Gender Equality- A State of the Art Literature Review. As soon as it is available, we will share a copy of the publication on our research page at organize365.com/research.

My initial hypothesis was that women were doing more work at home than men. Interestingly, those are not the results of our research! Members of younger generations share housework far more equitably than we expected. Gender roles have changed and we need solutions for all genders, all age groups, and all types of households. Organize 365® is adjusting based on this information. 

The literature review covers four major topics in the home: cueing and goal attainment, gender roles, female entrepreneurship, and future research. Listen in for a sneak preview of all these topics.

In this podcast series, we've been talking about essential organizing. You can catch up on this series by listening to these episodes:

1. Organizing Personal Spaces
2. Organizing Family & Communal Spaces
3. Organizing Storage Spaces

This week, we are moving to organizing your paper management in our quest for functional organization in your home. You know how much I love to talk about paper organization! People are FINALLY coming around to the fact that paper is not going away, and it needs to be organized. You could organize your paper first or last, and you could also choose to only organize portions of your paper. 

We found in our research study that 54% of people have piles of paper everywhere. Only 18% of people have a system in place for organizing that paper. In addition, 70% of Millenials perceive a reduction in stress when their paper is organized. You see, we all have paper. You could have less paper, but you're never going to be paperless. 

Paper is different than other areas of your home. It's different because 85% of what you store in your filing cabinet you will NEVER need again. The remaining 15% is paper that you do need and you need to be able to find it when you go looking for it. You only go looking for these important papers when there's a problem. Binders are the solution! Trust me, your future self in crisis will thank you when you have your paper organized and can find what you need.

But here's the other problem you will run into with paper: Only about 20% of what I suggest that you put into your binders is actually in your filing cabinet or it is actually paper at all. The other 80% of what needs to be in your binders is either on the computer where only you know how to find it or it is stored in your brain. If something happens to you, how does anyone else take care of anything in your home or for your family?

In this episode, you'll find encouragement for why and how to get your paper organized.

Are your papers organized? What is keeping you from organizing your paper?

Mentioned in this episode:

Podcast #420 - The Weight of Paper

Paper Organizing Retreats

The Paper Solution® Binders