Ruth, and the countless other readers who have written in asking for help with paper management, there is hope! Although we all thought by the year 2005 we'd be living blissfully paperless lives, you can tell that's not the case. Just look around your own home or office! Paperless? Ha!

Paper is the biggest organizing challenge most people face because it literally never stops coming. Every day, no matter what you do, more paper comes into your life. Mail, school, work, it just keeps flowing in. Your choices are:

a) Handle it in the moment
b) Handle it later
c) Don't handle it and let the fire department find you underneath it all years from now

A few factors determine your success in staying on top of your paper clutter:

1. SPEED. It's always best to handle paper as quickly as you can from the minute it arrives in your home. The quicker you make decisions and get that paper moving into a home (whether temporary or permanent) the less likely you are to have paper clutter in your life. Delaying action is just delaying the inevitable, making it that much harder to deal with later. One bite of something you don't like is a lot easier to take than an entire meal of it, wouldn't you agree?

2. HOMES. If you're able to handle your paper quickly, yet you have nowhere for your various categories to live, you're stuck again. It is absolutely crucial for you to create homes (both temporary and permanent) for your paper. You can sort it by who it belongs to, the type of information, or the next action needed. Regardless of the sorting criteria, it must be sorted and it must live somewhere.

Temporary homes give you somewhere to put paper while it's "in use" before it moves to its permanent home. Temporary homes might be stacking trays on your desk or kitchen counter, clipboards, attractive baskets, or even a 3-ring binder with plastic sleeves. Make these homes specific to either the kinds of paper you're temporarily storing, or the action necessary. Label each one clearly so others can help process paper too! (School Papers To Sign, Coupons, Bills To Pay, Outgoing Mail, Jim's Mail,
Stuff To File, etc)

Permanent homes include the shredder (yay!), the garbage can (yay!) or the file cabinet. But wait! Before you mindlessly file something away, think about it. Ask yourself what are the odds you'll actually, really, truly, honest-to-goodness, need this again? You don't want to clutter your file cabinet with things you're unlikely to use or need later. This just fills your filing cabinets faster and wastes valuable storage space.

If the paper relates to your taxes or tax return, I say keep it for at least seven years. Keep the actual tax returns forever. If it's just plain old utility bills, credit card bills, and other household information, don't worry so much. Check my blog for more specific records retention information.

3. CONFIDENCE. What does confidence have to do with keeping on top of the paper crush?Confidence enables you to sort your papers quickly, discerning what has value from what is just clutter. Confidence enables you to make decisions quickly, and feel confident that your decisions are sound.

Confidence lets you joyfully ditch all those tempting, ever-so-exciting catalogs, solicitations and junk mail that arrives each day without fail. (If only everything in our lives were as reliable as junk mail!)

Having confidence means you are empowered to be in action and you do so each day. You  understand that it's better to do a little every day than end up bogged down in weeks worth of paper you ignored because you were just afraid to deal with it.

So how do you develop this confidence? You guessed it... by doing. Action. Jumping in. The best way to develop confidence is to get into action, sorting, culling out, shredding and only keeping what you're absolutely sure you'll need later.