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Organizing the paper that comes into your home can be a
nightmare. With bills, junk mail, what the kids bring home
from school, it can all seem overwhelming. But as with every
organizational challenge in your home, all it takes is a
little planning. Here are two tips to help you get and keep
the home paper organization in shape in your home.
Have a home paper organization plan.
This one is probably the most critical step in getting the
paper in your home organized. If you do not have a plan,
chances are that the paper that comes into your home simply
ends up wherever it lands. This is especially a bad
situation when you have bills or important mail that you
treat this way. This can lead to late payments, late fees
and other things that negatively affect your current
finances and your future financial situation.
So how do you get a home paper organization plan? Decide
what you will do with every piece of paper that comes into
your home. Now depending on the piece of paper, this will
affect where it belongs. Let me explain. Chances are that
you do not need your kids’ arts and crafts projects from
school in the same place that the bills go. So have a
designated space in your home for incoming arts and crafts
projects and a separate space for your bills. Bills would
logically go in your home office while arts and crafts
projects could go in your kids’ rooms or in a certain
“display” area of the home. Deciding where the paper in your
house logically belongs is important for getting it
organized in a way that you actually use and can keep up
with. And that brings us to point number 2.
Stick to your
home paper organization
plan.
Easier said than done, I know. But critical if you want to
stay on top of the paper that makes it way into your home.
So how do you do this? One way is to get the whole family
involved in the paper organization plan. Get their buy-in to
the plan and more importantly, get their agreement to follow
the plan. Having a plan that no one follows is not going to
get you very far. Make sure that everyone is clear on the
plan so there are no excuses for not following it.
Another way to make sure that your home paper organization
plan is followed is to make sure that there are appropriate
consequences for not following the plan. One consequence
might be that anyone who does not follow the plan has to
organize all of the paper that comes into the house the next
day. Decide on what works for you but having consequences
for not following the plan can help everyone in the house
(including you!) keep up with it.
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