I receive a lot of questions by e-mail from readers, which is awesome. I expected the questions to be mostly technical in nature, but one category really surprised me. The questions go something like this:
I want to go paperless, but my spouse is not on board. How can I convince him or her that it is a good idea?
It can be frustrating when you are enthusiastic about making a life change, but others in your family are not. This is why I was so happy when Erin from Unclutterer posted this question a while ago: Ask Unclutterer: How do I convince my spouse to get rid of unnecessary papers?
The whole post is filled with great advice.
Kat, the first thing you need to do is accept that you live with paper keepers and stackers. It’s who they are. They were this way before you married into the family two years ago, and you will never be able to force them into becoming shredders, scanners, and filers. As much as you want to, you can’t force anyone into being an unclutterer.
Don’t stop at reading the article. The comment section has a lot of good tips too. I especially like the one from reader Loren on 2/24/2012.[1]
One thing that I usually tell people to remember is that usually resistance to these sorts of changes is based on fear: fear of the unknown, fear that things will be “lost”, fear that they won’t be able to find what they are looking for. The best way to combat fear is to show, don’t tell, and demonstrate small successes.
Also, remember, the whole point of doing all this is to reduce stress, not create it. What you may need to do is do the scanning and processing steps of going paperless, but then pack the paper out of the way somewhere. That way, you are free from visible clutter, you have your documents scanned and findable, but your significant other feels less stressed out because nothing is “thrown away”.
Have you had a situation like this? How did you deal with it?
(Photo by sambeckwith)
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The one from Christine Barker on 4/18/2012 is kinda gross though. ↩