What to Do About Paper Clutter

Paper clutter can affect our productivity at work. Being in front of a cluttered desk, or seeing your home office full of scattered & disorganized paper work may actually hamper our working spirits & will probably make us lazy too.

The first thing we need to think about is a filing system. File cabinets are available for sale at office supply stores and require very little space. Also, purchase paper file folders as they will be good to put into the file cabinets.

Organizing files

Now comes the difficult part of the task. The pile of papers must be ordered thus categorized and discriminated. Categorize the papers you want to keep for instance bills, tax papers, old bills, receipts, home maintenance and etc into separate folders.

We should be specific in naming the files without having to file every single piece of paper into its own file. Keep it relatively general so as to avoid having plenty of almost empty files. A file named 'Gardening' for example can have tool warranties, product pamphlets, brochures, garden tile invoices but not receipts which belong in a general receipt folder for convenient monthly expenditure calculations.

The name of the files or file headings should be appropriate for its contents. It will make searching for the files in the future a much easier task as opposed to having a non related file heading.

We can then start arranging the stacks in an alphabetical order placed in the file cabinets, by the most frequently used at the front of the drawer or by any other order which is suitable & will make the papers easily accessible to us. Stacks with a large amount of papers should be placed into 2 or more separate folders.

Junk paper decision

We have now organized our papers & placed them in an orderly fashion into a file cabinet. Now, what do we do with the remaining pile of paper that did not get categorized & became discriminated? We should decide whether they will be placed somewhere out of sight or become garbage.

Deciding whether to throw away a paper is a thought provoking process. We must make sure that the paper to be thrown away is actually useless. Ask yourself what is the worst thing that can happen without having the paper. The paper should be thrown away when we think nothing bad will happen to us by not keeping the piece of paper. Papers, magazines or books that we decided to keep can be stored away in a shelf of a cabinet or it can take an available space on a bookshelf.

Below is a guideline for what we can do to things we find in our paper clutters:

Keep:

• Credit card records.
• Cancelled checks.
• Health records.
• Investment records.
• Tax returns.
• Tax papers.
• Wills.

Discard:

• ATM receipts which are no longer readable.
• Expired insurance policies.
• Incomprehensible fax printouts.
• Non-tax related checks.
• Records for things that we do not own.

File maintenance

A file index will help us maintain our file collection and should be updated at least every month. Adding a new file will also require a file index update. We should do it as soon as possible so as to avoid forgetting about the new file or even making a new file that already exists in our file cabinets.

Avoiding Paper Clutter

When new mail arrives we should begin to look at it to immediately start taking action. Open your bills and file them. Throw away your junk mail.

Below are a list of things that should not be in our paper clutters (worthy to be placed under lock and key):

• A list of insurance policies.
• Birth certificates.
• Deeds.
• Other papers of great importance.
• Marriage certificates.
• Passports.
• Stock & bond certificates.

Perhaps you may have paper clutter filling up almost an entire room. Make an effort to start organizing it one day per week on weekends. Follow the tips above & slowly but surely you will find all your papers become well organized. Any piece of paper will then be efficiently available to you at your convenience.