An Easy Method To Organize Your Paper Clutter

Does anyone else feel like they are drowning in paper even in our attempt to go “paperless”?

My oldest son is in kindergarten and my younger two are in daycare/preschool and I feel like we are flooded with paperwork. This is a quick picture I took of my son’s backpack and then all the papers.  Eeeek.

Now it all has to be looked at because some is homework, practice assignments, calendars or newsletters. Some needs to be returned to school and some is precious projects or crafts he has done at school we like to look at together, talk about and keep.  (And then some things get thrown away…just saying)  So the main question is how to organize it and keep the paper clutter from overtaking all the counters, especially the kitchen?!?!

Here is the easy method I use.

First, create a paper {aka dumping} station. This keeps it all in one central location which is helpful when needing to find something.  It also makes it easy because everyone knows where backpacks, mail and any other random papers go, so they are not strewn all over the house.  That particular location will have to be specific to your home and your particular set-up.  Our’s is our laundry room.  Our house doesn’t have that wonderful hall tree built-in for backpacks, shoes, etc. so we had to get a little creative with our space.  We enter and exit through our laundry room everyday, so when we get home the backpack gets hung up on its hook and the mail and misc papers get placed on the counter all in our laundry room.  (Which is so much better than our previous spot…the kitchen counter….talk about a way to drive me crazy.)

***A quick tip regarding the designated spot.***  This central station method works best if you pick a spot you visit quickly upon entering your home, frequently pass through or go to often.  My husband and I tried our office for a while (makes more sense right?), but it just didn’t work.  Our office is at the front of our house and not a place we naturally go to so all the papers always ended up in the kitchen by default.  So again, make sure it is a convenient spot upon entering your home and frequently go to otherwise it has a tendency not to work…again this is from personal experience.  Also, it might take trying out a few different spots for a couple of weeks each to see what you like best.  Again, my husband and I had to try several places before we figured out the laundry room worked for us.

Second, pick a daily time to actually go through the papers you dropped off.  I do this almost immediately after we walk in the door.  We drop everything off in the laundry room, I get the boys a snack because they are staaaarrrvvviiinng, get dinner going or at least set the stuff out and then I wander back to the laundry room to open the mail, sift through the papers on the counter and go through my son’s backpack.

I have a two tier tray basket on the counter in our laundry room to help me stay organized once I have sorted the papers.  Junk mail gets thrown away/recycled/shredded immediately.  I address anything that needs immediate attention, like signing papers, homework, etc.  If it is not immediate, but has less than a week out “due date” it goes on top of our basket as a visual reminder of something I still need to take care of.  If it is paperwork that needs to be filed away or is more than a week out before it needs to be addressed I place it in either Ian’s or my tray.  (I bought our tray from Target several years ago. )  These could be good options: Option 1   Option 2

Third, pick another day/time to go through the papers in the tray.  Our goal is to go through the tray of papers once a week.  I sort out what needs to be taken care of and what needs to be filed away.  Then I take the pile that needs to be filed and go file them in our filing cabinet located in our office.  It takes me less than 5 min to actually file the papers, especially if I keep up with it.  I typically do this on Sundays so we have clean trays come Monday for all.the.papers.

Soooooooo, I am little better at doing this than my husband is.  He hates paperwork, and knowing this about him I never put anything time sensitive in his tray without telling him about it or showing it to him first.  (The tray still helps to keep things in a central location so when he has time to address it he knows exactly where to find it.)  He typically goes through his tray every couple of weeks, sometimes longer.  Much longer than that and he will probably get a “friendly” reminder from me that it is time. 😉  What mainly goes in his basket is paperwork he might want to review and then either throw away or file.  It helps to be on the same page regarding paperwork as to who (if not both) will regularly go through the papers so a deadline does not get overlooked or missed.  if our family, that person is me.

Lastly, have a long term filing system somewhere.  So as I mentioned before we do keep some paper.  Some of you reading this may do everything electronically and that is great, I would just suggest having a long term filing system in place wherever that is.  We have had our filing system and cabinet for a while now and is how I keep our long term papers organized.  As you can see in the picture below I use these colorful hanging file folders to make all our different file categories and then I place these regular file folders inside the hanging files for subcategories to some of our main files.  (You could also get these colorful file folders if you wanted to color coordinate with the hanging ones.  Also, here is a more plain hanging file folder if that is your preference.)

Below is a list of most of our categories and subcategories we have in our filing cabinet to give you some examples:

• A hanging file for each month of the year  – mainly for important receipts if I don’t have those stored in my email.
• Car file
  • sub-folder for each car we own
•  Health file each person in our family
• Taxes file
  • sub-folder for each specific year
• Daycare file  – for any important paperwork or schedule sheets
• Craft/paper keepsakes file for each child
  • **Eventually I will do something different (I am looking into making them into a book), but for know I store the items I want to keep in a file folder so they are all in one place**
• Job file for my husband and myself
  • sub folder for each job
• Misc file
• Financial files
• Insurance files
• House file

Then about once a year I go through our filing cabinet, shred any documents we no longer need, add new folders if needed and remove ones we no longer use.

After trying several different places and methods, I have found this to be easy, keeps the paper clutter to a minimum, organized and out of our kitchen.  I hope this helps you too!!

Xoxo,

Sarah