Taming the Paperwork Beast

When it comes to keeping a home organized I find the number one place people struggle is their paperwork. It’s an endless incoming supply of mail, bills, kids school work, kids art work, cards, etc. When I go into a client's homes I have found piles of mail stacked in several places throughout the home, cards and sentimental items shoved in closets or cupboards. Kids art work and school work littered throughout the house. Why does this seem to be such a universal problem for so many? It simply boils down to the items not having a “home” in your home or a system in place to deal with these items as they come into your home.

Here are a few quick tips to help you tame that mess into something that you can keep under control.

| SORT |

Pull all your paperwork from all your piles, stashes and “quick company is coming over better shove this somewhere” places. Yes, ALL of them! Sort them into piles of like items- bills by vendor, cards by occasion, art and school work by child, coupons, important documents, etc.

| THIN |

Next go through each of these piles. Keep only the items that have high sentimental value, importance, or necessity. Toss all the junk mail, coupons you may use someday, spelling tests, graded daily homework, etc.

Here’s a quick rundown of what you should keep:

-Bills: loan payoffs, home purchase or refinance paperwork, receipts for large items purchased, medical bills, life insurance and insurance policies, all items for taxes for the past 7 years. Any other paper statement or bill really only needs to be kept for a year. Shred what you no longer need.

-Coupons: only keep what you will truly use. Put these in your purse or your car so you will remember to use these in the near future. If you are a hoarder of coupons and you rarely use them. STOP and create a system for these before collecting more....more on the system in a minute.

-Gift Cards: We live in a gift card society. And we all use them, but what do you do with the 50 you have floating around your house now? Figure out how much is left on each card, write the balance with a sharpie on the back of the card. Keep the ones to the places you use often in your purse or car so you can remember to use it when you are at this store.

-Important Documents: Put together and store in a safe place birth certificates, social security cards, passports, immunization records, marriage license, deeds, titles, insurance policies and any other important family documents. Having these items stored together will make it easier for you to grab what you need when you need to access these items.

-Sentimental Cards: If you are a sentimental person and save the special cards from those you love, that’s great! But let's just keep the most important of these cards. You don't need to save every card you received from little Susie’s second birthday, perhaps just those from close family and friends. Same with holiday, graduation, wedding, sympathy and birthday cards. Save those that you will want to look back on.

-Children's school and artwork: Save the best of the best of the best of these items! Go thru carefully. If there are items you want to save but they will not preserve will, take pictures of these items and put them together in a digital scrapbook of your child's artwork. Then physically save the absolute best of the best. Same with school work, save samples of your child's handwriting from kindergarten or first grade, nice notes from the teachers, reports your child spent a deal of time on, etc. What you don’t need to keep is every piece of daily school work, old notebook, old work books etc. Really pair these items down to what you truly need.

| HOME |

Great! Now you have all your paperwork sorted, let's give it a home! Give these items a place to live your space so as you get more they will have a place to be put away. Here’s some examples for the items we discussed above.

-Bills: file your bills into a filing cabinet or box with a folder for each vendor or purpose (important receipts, manuals, etc).

-Cards: buy card boxes to store the cards you want to save. Create a box for each family member, or by holiday/event. Label these so as you get more cards in they can easily be filed into their home.

-Children’s school and artwork: Once you have sorted out and kept the best of the best of the best items it’s time to give them a home. For school work a file box with a folder for each grade works nicely. File the items you saved in the correct folder. You can also put the artwork into these folders as well. Other things I like to add to these folders are awards won at school or extra curricular activities they are involved in, extra school pictures, class pictures etc. If you are one who likes to make a memory book or scrapbook for your child then all these items are in one place ready to be added to their book. If that’s not you, then all your child's special items are in one place for them to look back on. If the artwork you saved won’t fit in these folders, then a separate art bin can be used. These can be stored in your child's closet, your office, the storage room, etc.

| SYSTEM |

Wow! You just accomplished quite a bit! Now the last and the most important step is implementing a system so that your paperwork can stay organized and not go back to the mess you just cleaned up. This is on you and will take your commitment to keeping your paperwork organized.

How do you create a system? Here’s some ideas for the paper messes we’ve discussed.

Find a spot in your home-mudroom counter, kitchen counter, office desk- that you put your mail and paperwork as it comes into your house. Have a designated place to put a file sorter to sort your mail and items that need to be addressed and filed. Make a pile of items to file. Make a pile of items to pay or address within the next week.

-Bills: Immediately go through it and throw away the junk mail. Once a week or once a month FILE these documents. Again, this is on you. Make it a habit and it will keep it from piling up. Also switch over to e-statements and bills wherever possible. This will keep you paper clutter down significantly and will also help the environment while you're at it!

-Coupons: As you get them in the mail, cut out what you will use. File them in a coupon binder that is kept in your purse or car. Clean out your binder once a month to get rid of expired coupons.

-Cards: As you get cards in the mail or different events, put the cards you wish to save in your to be filed pile. File these into your card boxes each week or month as you have established in a system that works for you.

-Children's school and artwork: Keep a folder for each child in the area you keep your file pile of incoming paperwork. Write their name on this folder. As school work comes home in their backpacks, sort through these papers. Praise your child for their great work, after looking it over, toss what can be tossed, read what needs to be read, and keep the best of the best of the best. Put it in this folder. I like to leave this here for the school year. At the end of the school year I again go through the folder of the school work and art work I have kept and toss anything else that can be tossed. Then I simply take this folder and add this to their school work file box. Easy peasy. Any artwork displayed at home can be filed into their boxes as soon as you take it down. Teach your children you are proud of their hard work but that it’s okay to not save EVERYTHING they bring home!

Once all your paperwork has a place to be put (a home) and a system to get it to it’s new home, taming the paperwork beast becomes much more manageable. If this all seems to be more than you can manage and you need help to get your paperwork under control, don’t be afraid to ask for help! Having a professional organizer come in to help you thin/home/system your paperwork can truly change how your home functions! Please reach out to me if this is you!

Happy Organizing!

Lindsay