Welcome to Ask Wirecutter, where deputy editor Annemarie Conte helps you figure out how to make the most of your stuff in real life. If you have a shopping conundrum for our advice columnist, submit it using this form.
Dear Wirecutter,
My boyfriend leaves a paper trail. I still don’t know where he gets all of these papers—mail? the office? notes he’s taken and never thrown away?—but I know where they end up, which is everywhere. Do you have any suggestions for how to corral his papers so he can keep them and I don’t have to stare at his stupid piles?
JB
Dear JB,
Stupid piles! Many people are familiar with them, either as a piler themselves or an enraged-by-piles person. (For those of you who live with a piler and are not enraged by the piles, please share your secrets to calm with the rest of us!)
I’m a self-loathing piler. I make them. I see them. I can’t stop them. But I do my best to contain, manage, and hide them by forcing myself to spend some time each week (20 minutes, a six-song playlist, or one episode of Schitt’s Creek) dealing with that molehill so it doesn’t become a mountain.
There is hope for compromise and change here, but your BF needs to be on board.
