Hasta La Ideas

A Frank Lloyd Wright design you can safely demolish and rebuild again without fear, the new Pop-Out Guggenheim Museum is an entertaining eight-piece puzzle conceived by Atlanta-based artist Marc Tetro. The simplified cardboard version comes packed flat, and the large components easily pop out and fold up allowing anyone…

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Is paper causing you stress? Are you noticing piles at every turn? Paper clutter can be a thorn in your side, but there are things you can do straight away — yes, right now — to banish the paper monster (or at least put it in its proper place). Along with previous tips we’ve shared, here are six more things you can do immediately to keep paper clutter to a minimum.

Make sense of your greeting card collection

Greeting cards (and other types of stationery) are a great way to keep in touch with the people we care about and to celebrate special moments with them. But, what happens when you buy a card for someone and then can’t find it? Oftentimes, these cards co-mingle with documents in paper piles, making them difficult to find. Instead, store blank cards separately from your other paperwork in a specific spot, folder, or something like a card organizer.

Immediate steps:

• Use a greeting card organizer to categorize/store blank (not sent) cards.
• Only keep cards you’ve received that have high sentimental value in an archival box or card book. If the cards aren’t particularly special, snap a picture and recycle them.

Shred credit card offers

Unwanted credit card offers can fill your mailbox and increase your mail processing time. If you receive a large number offers, this can be very frustrating. Unless you plan to apply for the credit card, remove the offers from among the mail you need to read/act on and shred them immediately (or put them in your shred bin to destroy later). Be sure keep them out of your recycling bin to reduce your risk of identity theft.

Immediate actions:

• Sign up for OptOutPrescreen to stop receiving preapproved credit card offers in the mail.
• To cancel all mailings from members of the Direct Marketing Association, remove yourself from their mailing lists through DMAchoice.org. (Note: Both of these steps, however, will not stop mailings from financial services companies you use.)

Hold on to your children’s frame-worthy artwork

Children’s artwork can be difficult to trash or recycle. The artwork provides wonderful memories and, if your child is particularly creative, you may have a large collection of their work. When that volume outgrows your display areas (like the front of your fridge), you could find them scattered about your home. Consider creating a display wall or mount two or three frames that will hold the most prized pieces (and rotate in newer work). You can also turn the artwork into interesting things like placemats, postage stamps (Zazzle.com or PictureItPostage.com), photo books, or a stuffed toy. Not sure which ones to keep/display? Choose the artwork that is most meaningful to you, or if your child is old enough, allow him to pick the ones he loves.

Immediate steps:

• Select a display area for your child’s masterpieces.
• Keep all artwork that you still need to decide on in one location.
• Take pictures of the artwork you like but don’t want to keep/display and give the originals to a grandparent or friend.

Cut back on your coupons

Couponing is very popular these days and can be very helpful when used for items that you use frequently. Like other paper that you get on a regular basis, they can get out of hand and get lost in the paper mess. Cull your coupon collection by removing those that have expired and keep only the ones for products/services you use often.

Immediate steps:

• Keep coupons in a coupon holder, plastic envelope, or binder.
• Sign up for digital coupons that can be scanned from your smart phone (or that are attached to your store loyalty card).

Be selective about the magazines you’ll keep

Why are magazines so difficult to purge? Perhaps it’s because their covers promise fascinating stories and lifehacks that can streamline the busiest of households? It’s no wonder they end up in almost every room in your home, infiltrate your bags, make their way to your car, and even find a long-term spot in your office. Somehow, they seem to compel us to keep them well beyond their usefulness. Do your best to get rid of them before the new one arrives in 30 days. Instead, use the table of contents or the cover stories to decide which pages you’ll keep and scan for future use. And, remember that you’re likely to find the same content online as many publishers create e-versions of their articles.

Immediate steps:

• Donate magazines to doctor’s offices, senior or community centers, art teachers, or your local library if the magazine is extremely popular or very rare/expensive.
• Cancel your subscriptions and only purchase the issues you need or save the online version.
• Create specific (paper or electronic) folders for each page you keep (“patio project,” “decorating ideas,” “healthy eating,” etc.).

Recycle old shopping lists, task lists, and other handwritten notes

Do you like jotting down notes or your to do’s on slips of paper? Writing task lists can help you organize, prioritize, and focus on your to-do items. They can also get mixed in with other types of papers and disappear rather quickly. This means you’ll probably spend too much time looking for that phone number you wrote down, the paper with the things you needed to pick up at the grocery store, or the sticky note with the name of that app you wanted to download. Keep your notes and lists in a spot where you’ll remember where you put them and can easily access them, and, once you’re finished with them, recycle or shred them if they contain sensitive information.

Immediate actions:

• Write task and grocery lists in a notebook instead of on scraps of paper.
• Take a picture of your note or list and upload it to Evernote.
• If your notebook is not accessible, use your smart phone to record a voice memo instead.

Let go of conference materials and brochures

If you attend conferences, you will invariably get reading materials from the conference organizers, from the sessions you attend, and from the vendors you meet. And, if you’re like many people, though you may be interested in reviewing everything once you get home, you probably forget about it. To avoid conference paper pile ups, schedule an hour on your daily calendar the day you return home or the next day to go through all your conference materials.

Immediate actions:

• Bookmark the sites of vendors you’re interested in researching further.
• Recycle flyers and other unwanted conference brochures.
• Scan pages you want to keep from the program book or session notes (or simply keep the CD, if one is offered).

Like this site? Buy Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week from Amazon.com today.

Yulia Brodskaya est une artiste russe vivant en Angleterre. Cette talentueuse créatrice nous propose de découvrir des compositions typographiques faîtes de papier. Très détaillées, ses oeuvres ont fait d’elle une artiste aujourd’hui prisée par de nombreux annonceurs à travers le monde. Plus dans la suite.

Managing paper is often a reason I’m called in to help clients. They are usually frustrated by growing paper piles and, almost always, there is a Miscellaneous (MISC) file among the piles. The MISC file is like a junk drawer for a diverse set of papers they’re not sure how to process.

When files are labeled MISC, it’s difficult to figure out (and find) what is inside because the label is broad and encompasses several categories. This will ultimately slow you down when you need to retrieve information, and on days when things are hectic and particularly fast-paced, you can quickly get frustrated. So, why are MISC files created so often? Perhaps because it’s easier to put everything in one general file than making more complex decisions. Figuring out what to do takes time and some decision making, like what to keep and what to recycle/shred, what categories to use, and making room for new items.

To banish that catch-all file and make deciding what to do a little easier, follow these steps. Of course, not every system will work for everyone, but this three-step process will at least get you thinking about creating one that will work for you.

1. Ask yourself a few questions. Before you decide where to put a specific piece of paper, decide if you actually need that piece of paper. Can you access it in some other way (internet, a digital scanned copy)? How long has it been since you last referred to that document? Does the responsibility of storing it still lie with you or does it now belong to someone else or another department?
2. Determine the next action needed. Once you’ve decided which papers you need to keep, these papers will need a permanent living space (just like everything else in your home or office). Think about the next action that needs to be taken so that you can determine the paper’s category. Do you need to make a follow up call to a client? Pay a bill? Edit a manuscript? Then, you could have folders with the following labels:
   • Current bills
   • To call or Today’s tasks (or add client call to your to-do list instead)
   • Editing or the title of the manuscript

   The names you use will be particular to you and the typical documents you need to keep. Also, consider looking at your existing categories to see if you can find the right match for your papers (then you wouldn’t have to make a new folder or come up with a new category at all).

3. Use easy-to-remember categories. Putting things in categories actually helps us to remember those items better. This means you’ll be more efficient at finding the files you want when they are grouped by a specific topic that makes sense to you. For instance, you might have a Utilities category in which you put the current telephone, gas, electric, and water bills. Or, a “Blogging” folder for articles that inspire your future posts.

You can really simplify the filing process by removing your MISC folder from your paper filing system. You’ll find that there really isn’t a need for a general file once you have determined the correct category for your papers. And, keep in mind, the less you print, the less you have to file and retrieve. When possible, use online bookmarking tools (like Delicious and Instapaper) and/or tag your documents and save them to your hard drive and/or cloud server so you can find them easily.

Like this site? Buy Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week from Amazon.com today.

Design practice 24° Studio linked together hundreds of hollow paper stars to line a tunnel and stairway in Santorini, Greece.

The installation, called Daphne, has been placed on the path up to the ruins of Kasteli castle in Pyrgos.

Starting from a few panels at the foot of the stairs, the tunnel grows up and around until it encloses the space.

In the evening the tunnel is lit up by LED lights which glow through the paper.

The tunnel is part of the Santorini Biennale of Arts, which continues until 30th September 2012.

See all our stories about paper »

Here’s some more text from the designers:

Daphne is a site-specific installation situated within the tunnelled stairway that interplays with the notion of concealing and revealing the ancient interior surfaces of the tunnel leading to the peak of Pyrgos. Made entirely of self-supporting paper panels, Daphne creates an enclosure that intervenes the visitors’ perception of the existing conditions as a container of conglomerated memory as the paper panels age and take their shape accordingly to the local condition. The installation is part of Santorini Biennale of Arts that will take place until September 30, 2012.

A village is a vessel of memory, and reaching to the highest peak at Pyrgos from the main village square is, therefore, an excursion to its past memory where every surface contains a history. During the excursion to the Kasteli, visitors will have to encounter a tunnel stairway that leads to the destination. The history of the tunnel may be unknown to visitors and the space of the tunnel may seem insignificant to the passers by at first.

Daphne makes a mundane moment of procession through this enclosed space into highly charged space that will celebrate the coexistence of past, present and future. A trace of Daphne will appear at the entrance of the tunnel. Starting from a few panels at the foot of the stairs, it will grow its number and encapsulates the interior surface of the tunnel, only maintaining its key element to wrap the space and juxtapose the “past” with the “present” intervention. The interior illumination will accentuate the space from dusk to dawn that can be of an emphasis on how the existing materiality can coexist with new materiality to suggest uncanny, yet, mesmerising possibility.

Further impact of environmental condition will also play an important role in this installation. The wind and humidity condition as well as people’s interactions during the endurance of Santorini Biennale will affect the ageing of the material. This inevitable and also unpredictable factor of the installation and this process will illustrate how the transformation of textural and colour quality can bring phenomenal conditions of time and space. These latent effects of material expressing this ephemeral condition will become a key factor, in which the “past”, “present” and “future” all will be contained.

24° Studio is a multidisciplinary practice established in 2008 by Fumio Hirakawa and Marina Topunova. We dedicate our investigation in working at the intersection of architecture, technology and environment. It is in our inherence to collaborate with a vast network of experts to deliver new solutions to our clients and audiences in realising their aspirations. With ever changing global movements bringing us limitless inspirations, 24° Studio believes that the process of integrating multiple perspectives will lead to innovative result, thus redefining the connection between our body and our surroundings.

Project Title: Daphne
Type: Installation
Location: Pyrgos, Santorini, Greece
Completion Date: July 2012
Materials: Watercolor Paper String
Light Source: LED
Area: 25m2 /82sf
Design: 24° Studio (Fumio Hirakawa + Marina Topunova)
Client: Santorini Biennale of Arts Organising Committee

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24° Studio appeared first on Dezeen.