I didn’t expect to have any problems with this step. I would be separating out any sentimental papers, so I really didn’t expect to have any issues. One thing Marie Kondo says is that you have to take ALL of the papers throughout the house and pile them in one place. I did not realize I had that many papers to go through. I also didn’t expect how long it would take me to go through all of these papers. I managed to do all of the books in a few hours. It took about 6 hours just to finish the first half of the sorting. By the time I had finished, I was left with only three smaller piles of papers, I was sick of looking at papers, so I took a break.

I resumed working on the papers a few days later and that took a few hours as well! While Marie Kondo is able to really only have three folders (important papers, warranties, and stuff that needs to be done), I was pretty pleased with how few papers I had left. There is also another folder I keep upstairs of spiritual papers that I wanted to keep. Some of them were from classes I took or rituals that I liked, but there weren’t that many of them.