One Week to Organized: Papers Part 2

In my last post, you learned exactly how to prepare to conquer your paper dilemma. How did you do? Were you able to find a proper staging area and work space? Remember, this won’t be a forever job. You only need the space for a week (or less if you’re motivated). If you find yourself overwhelmed at the start, don’t hesitate to ask for help from a friend, family member, or professional organizer. It’s important that you are empowered to reach your goals --- we can help you with that!
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Now that you’ve collected all your papers and gathered the necessary tools to help you get the job done, let’s identify what you've got! 

Pick It Up. Begin by picking up the first piece of paper nearest you. Take a deep breath and determine that whatever stack you started with, that you’ll finish that stack before venturing to the next.  This trick will help you easily return to work after taking a break.

​Decide to Keep It or Toss It. Studies have shown that 80% of what is filed NEVER sees the light of day again. If you’ve got 1000 pieces of paper that means you could be wasting time trying to file 800 pieces you’ll never need to retrieve. Don’t do that. Make the decision to toss or shred NOW so that you can reduce the number of documents that make up your 80%. Here are some guidelines to get you started tossing and keeping.

• Current Records/Reference: this month’s receipts and bills if you like to check them against your credit card/bank statement, this year’s insurance policies, on-going long-term projects
• Important Past Records: tax returns & supporting documentation, loans, cancelled insurance policies, kids' old cards/school papers (if you want), special ed IEPs
• Vital Records: birth/death certificates, marriage licenses, adoption papers, social security cards
• Actionable: bills to pay, notes of people to call, to-do lists
• Toss: ads, coupons you won't actually use, items that are no longer useful, items that can be found online, duplicates

This chart by Clean Mama will help you know how long to keep past documents. If you're unsure about a specific document and have gone through the infographic twice, keep it. We'll weed it out later down the road --- but remember, delayed decisions are what got you into this paper mess in the first place. 

Name It. Identifying each paper is only as helpful as the name you give it. File names should be simple, broad in scope, and based on retrieval. For instance, it would be better to “name” a paper/file as “bill to pay” rather than “Greenville Water January bill” because “bill to pay” is actionable and will enable you to find it when you need it, along with all the other bills you need to pay. Your names should work for YOU. Everyone organizes differently and filing is best achieved when the person who will access the files, labels the files based on the associations he has in his mind. So grab a clean manila folder and label it with whatever word or phrase popped into YOUR head when you identified it. Remember, you can always change it later. Don’t waste time agonizing over label names right now. We’ll evaluate them one more time before putting them in their final homes. 

Place It. Put your file over to the empty side of your work space. You’ll end up with quite a few of these, so having a banker’s box or other container to help the folders stand up is handy but not necessary. I recommend putting these files in alphabetical order, so that as you identify similar documents (i.e., another "bill to pay") you can quickly find the correct folder and drop the document in there.

Repeat. Grab the next sheet of paper on top of the same stack you started with. Go through the process again. Do NOT under any circumstances label a file “Miscellaneous” and start dropping items into it. That’s not okay. Misc files are delayed decision making. They are what’s been plaguing you this whole time. Fight the urge to turn back to what you know! It wasn’t working for you then and it won’t magically start working for you now.

At the end of this exercise, you will have NO MORE stacks of paper. Every piece you’re keeping will be contained in a handy dandy manila folder, unless you ran out. If you did happen to run out, I hope you labeled those non-filed stacks with a post-it. Post-its are my trusty backup when I’m folderless. The next time we meet, we’ll be talking about where to store these “contained” papers. I hope you’ll join us.
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In the mean time, tell me how things are going. Do you have any questions?
​Are there any documents you’re stuck on?

Overwhelmed? We Can Do The Work For You!