Tips

Preventing Paper Pileup

It’s back-to-school time, and whether you have young ones in the house starting a new school year or not, this time of year seems to inspire a fresh start in people.  After the loose and lazy summer, it’s time to sharpen all your pencils and get organized!  My family is getting used to the new routines of September, but it seems like the paper coming in to my house has doubled, and the time to deal with it has been cut in half.  If that sounds familiar, here are some hints to prevent the paper in your house from piling up.

• Get in the habit of opening your mail over the recycling bin.  Outer envelopes, catalogs, junk mail – recycle it before you even put it down.  In fact, don’t even bring the mail in the house until you’re ready to deal with it so it never has a chance to pile.
• Put recycling baskets in lots of different areas of your house (i.e. playroom for art scraps, bedroom for magazines, kitchen for mail).  Any decorative basket or container that blends into your décor will do.  
• Create a set of counter-top action files in the room where paper tends to gather the most  (often the kitchen) to corral  similar papers for action later.  The label of each action file will depend on your own papers, but examples are “to file,” “to shred,” “to read.”
• If you have more than two different issues of the same magazine that you haven’t read yet, admit that it’s not a priority for you and cancel the subscription.  For other magazines, tear out articles/recipes of interest and keep in an accordion file or binder, recycle the rest of the mag when you’ve read it.
• As soon as new activity schedules come home, take a minute to put them all right onto the family calendar, then file team lists and other paperwork in an “activities” file or binder for the year.  That way, the info you really need (where to be and when) is all in one place, and you know where to look for more detail if necessary.

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