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Even if you estab­lish a thor­ough­ly thought through sys­tem for your good-to-have mate­r­i­al (also referred to as ref­er­ence-mate­r­i­al), it will most like­ly evolve and grow over time. 

The more mate­r­i­al you have, the more room it requires and the hard­er it is to find just what you are search­ing for – that is, if you don’t clean out. 

I can usu­al­ly dis­tin­guish two meth­ods peo­ple I meet use to make sure they do not have too much good-to-have material:

Clean out sel­dom and a lot at a time

Some devote a day every year to clean­ing, when they get a few rolls of black plas­tic bags, order a con­tain­er and do a prop­er ​”blow out”. 

If you get a rush from real­ly get­ting down to it, and make a large change in one go, this method is prob­a­bly per­fect for you. If clean­ing isn’t one of your favorite activ­i­ties, but rather some­thing you tend to post­pone, then the sec­ond alter­na­tive may be more appro­pri­ate for you:

Clean out often and lit­tle at a time

This method will fit you who keep your ref­er­ence mate­r­i­al in a well struc­tured sys­tem for hang­ing file fold­ers, like a glove. Take a hang­ing file fold­er a week and clear it from any­thing you no longer will need. And there you are! It is now updat­ed, fresh, cleaned out and thin­ner. Move some sort of mark­er from fold­er to fold­er as you go along, so that you know which one is next. The tag may be a paper­clip, a doc­u­ment clip or a piece of blu-tack. 

If you keep your doc­u­ments in binders, go though one reg­is­ter tab every week instead, and go from binder to binder, from tab to tab so that you with­in one or two years have gone through the entire system. 

There is a bonus effect with this method. It is that you once every week have the chance to be remind­ed of the pos­si­bil­i­ties which are oth­er­wise con­cealed deep with­in the hang­ing file fold­er next in line to be cleaned out. If you chose the ​“big blow-out method” you will only have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go trea­sure-hunt­ing in your own ref­er­ence mate­r­i­al once a year.

Don’t buy anoth­er bookshelf

Regard­less what method you chose to oper­ate by the effect will be that you eas­i­er will find the mate­r­i­al you are look­ing for when you tru­ly need it. And besides for this, you will not have to buy anoth­er book­shelf as the old ones fill up. You have what you need, no more and no less.

What is your way?

So, what do you chose? Often and a lit­tle at a time, or a lot and rarely? If you have answered this ques­tion suc­cess­ful­ly or if you have anoth­er even bet­ter way to get going with clean­ing out, let us know by leav­ing a comment.