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Paper Clutter is one of the biggest issues for many households. The biggest problem with paper clutter is not just the clutter, it is the missed deadlines, un-paid bills, even checks never deposited! One of the most common places people hire me to organize is the home office mostly because of paper clutter.

Once you can get your home office organized, it helps to maintain systems you create to deal with paper on a daily basis.

WHEN THE PAPER CLUTTER HAS ALREADY PILED UP

This is what I suggest for when paper clutter is a huge problem and you need a fresh start. The great thing about this process is you can do it while you binge on Netflix. Win-win.

Warning: if you only do part of this suggestion, it won’t help. Commit to follow-through!

Supplies:

• laundry basket
• box/ big paper bag
• inbox (I use a medium basket like this as my inbox)
• 2 manila folders or file jackets (They make so many pretty ones, in case you wanted to know. These doesn’t actually have to be manila, lol.)

Take a box or laundry basket around your house and gather all of the piles of mail and paper into one place. I mean, put in ALL of the paper, even important stuff. Once you start this project, don’t distract yourself with any other project until the basket is empty.

Find a table or even floor space where you’ll have some room to sort. Go ahead and sort your basket into the following piles. This is probably the longest step, but it matters.

Piles will be things like (about 5-6 piles):

• needs urgent action
• needs action soon
• ads/coupons that I plan to use
• things to file or put somewhere else in the house
• other
• recycling/trash (sort these into your box/ big paper bag)

After you’ve sorted the basket of paper clutter, don’t stop there. Success is in finishing every single step.

1. Start with the pile of things that need urgent action. Take the time you need and get through it!
2. To get through this process a little quicker, you can take your “needs action soon” pile and put it in your new inbox. Go ahead and find a place for your inbox, like a spot on the kitchen counter, kitchen cabinet, office, laundry room shelf, or wherever it’s convenient. (Important: Read the next section about how to use your Inbox!!!)
3. I know that when you go through your mail, some of the ads or coupons may be interesting to you. I keep current things like this in a manila folder at the bottom of my inbox.
4. Go through the file pile and get stuff filed. Please read the section below about filing! I think it will make this task easier.
5. For the things you want to keep, but don’t need to be filed, like school directories for the current year, I put these things in my second manila folder and put it at the bottom of my inbox with the other manila folder. This way all my papers are in one place and there’s no guessing where to find something.
6. Anything left that needs to be relocated, pause your Netflix show and do this right now.
7. Deal with anything left and cleanup your workspace. Put your laundry basket away and take out the trash.

Finished? You just earned yourself a fresh start. Now figure out how to keep the paper clutter from building up again.

USE AN INBOX (THE RIGHT WAY)

Laundry and Paper are the monsters of homemaking and are more similar than you realize. A good strategy for laundry maintenance can teach you a lot about how to solve your paper problem.

Your dirty clothes go in a hamper until its time to wash it. Even if you’re not perfect at this yet, you probably at least understand why you don’t want piles of dirty laundry lying around your house.

Also, it would be a waste of time and energy to wash each piece of laundry one at a time as it becomes dirty. I use my inbox as my paper hamper and I save time dealing with my papers at the same time.

PSA: The “touch everything once” method works for no one I know, except people without kids or people who end up with lots of piles of papers in their home.

Your paper needs a place to go until the time to deal with it. I use an inbox that sits in my little desk nook near the kitchen. When mail comes in, I do a quick sort and recycle the obvious junk mail and place the rest in my inbox. Sometimes I don’t have time to even do the quick sort or someone else checks the mail for me, so even junk paper ends up in the inbox. That’s okay. When papers come in from the doctors, school, church, or other places, it goes straight to the inbox. All that paper never even has to grace any surface. Of course paper still occasionally ends up on a counter or table, because we’re not robots, but when I find paper on surfaces, I put it in the inbox.

{If you want to read more on how to effectively use your inbox, read HERE. An inbox is vital for keeping clutter off surfaces in my home!}

WEEKLY APPOINTMENT TO ADULT

Set an appointment with yourself once a week to go through your inbox and do the boring adult stuff. During the time I set aside weekly, I act like my own secretary. I go through the mail, pay bills, RSVP to parties, file or scan important stuff, make phone calls, and whatever else needs to get done. I don’t have to worry about all this important adult stuff the rest of the week, because I know it will get done. This weekly appointment keeps mental clutter out of my mind, not to mention paper clutter off my counters!

This appointment is very important to keep every week.

A weekly appointment means that I am going to deal with paper within a week of receiving it. Very few paper things require more urgency than handling within a week, and usually those are things we know about in advance or are important enough to carve out time right away to handle.

Another great thing about the inbox is that if you happen to need a paper that hasn’t been dealt with yet, you know where to find it! In fact, you know where to find ALL your papers.

{If you’d like to read more in-depth about how I do this weekly Home Management Appointment (I call H.M. Session), read HERE. I have a routine I follow during my appointments so that I handle other important things at the same time.}

A WORKING FILE SYSTEM

An important part of handling paper is having an organized place for papers you’re keeping. Some papers make sense to go in a home office filing system and some papers make sense to go in a home management binder. Your filing systems will work so much better if you are only keeping papers that truly need to be kept. Just like you get rid of clothes that you don’t like or don’t fit right anymore to fit everything in your closet, you need to get rid of the unnecessary paper or your filing system will start overflowing.

{Ideally, your home office files are mostly self-maintaining. I explain a great way to manage home office files HERE. There are a few easy tasks to do at the beginning of each year, but other than that – it maintains itself!}

TRUST THE SYSTEM

Trust the system and don’t sabotage yourself. As soon as you start little piles of “stuff I really can’t forget to do,” you just signaled to yourself that you don’t actually plan on working the system. It’s the beginning of the end.

Because I’ve kept up this system long enough, I trust myself with it. Just like I don’t worry about running out of clean clothes or towels, because I have a routine for making sure laundry is maintained, I know I’m going to handle paper too. This means that even important mail goes to my inbox, because I know it will get handled appropriately.

Force yourself to put even important papers in there and you will train yourself to trust the system!

From my home to yours,
Mary

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