Up to 70 percent of a magazine is advertisements and they are updated every month, so you don’t need to keep them. . . . If there happens to be an article you want to read or save, tear it out and read or file it, and throw the rest away.
—Don Aslett
“Your daughter is on the phone,” Danielle’s secretary announced over the intercom. Danielle ended her conversation with her boss and took the call.
“Mom,” her nine-year-old daughter Gabrielle started, sniffling at the other end, “my class is going to the planetarium today, but the teacher won’t let me go without my permission slip. Did you forget to sign it?”
Danielle sighed. Yes, she meant to sign and return it right away, but she must have gotten distracted. It was sitting in the pile of papers on the kitchen counter—or was it by the computer? “Let me talk with your teacher,” said Danielle.
Gabrielle turned the phone over to Mrs. Dartmouth, but before Danielle could begin, the teacher broke in. “Mrs. Jones, this is the third time you’ve missed a permission slip deadline. I’m sorry, but it’s too late now. The bus is filled. Please pick up Gabrielle at the office.”
Danielle felt reprimanded as she left work. She realized it was her fault, one more in a long string of mishaps. Her boss was irritated because two weeks ago she took off to get her son’s passport notarized for his trip to Europe––the day it was due.
Those two paperwork problems took two mornings to unravel, but there was another one that kept her awake at night. Danielle explained it to me on the phone. “I turned in my taxes really late this year,” she stated. “But I’ve got to have that refund check this week or borrow money, which I can’t afford. Why does everything depend on paperwork?”
Paper, Paper, Everywhere
If it’s true that people spend twenty minutes a day looking for things, it’s likely that fifteen minutes of that time is spent searching for a missing paper. Danielle lost two mornings of work taking care of her kids’ paperwork, several weeks of sleepless nights waiting for her refund check, and frequent moments of disrespect from her boss, a teacher, and her children. It was getting costly.
Here’s what Danielle needed to know to turn things around and put things in place.
Clean Up the Mail Pile Every Day
The average household receives fifteen pieces of mail a day. Five of those are junk mail and can be tossed immediately. Likely, five more are bills or important papers you can file appropriately. And the other five, which I call the “dangling five,” start a paper pile on the kitchen counter.
In a year of five extra papers a day on the counter, fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred pieces of paper, or fifteen to eighteen inches of paperwork, pile up and send you scrambling to find the one paper you need when you need it. That’s no longer necessary if you establish a workable plan to handle your mail.
Set Up a Personal Organizing Center
Danielle and I set up a Personal Organizing Center (POC) in the kitchen right near her monthly calendar and telephone. The two feet of counter space became the sole spot to open mail and handle the day’s papers.
All the daily papers landed there. In a drawer she kept a small black office tray divider with a working pen and pencil, two sizes of paper clips, stamps, Post-it notes, and highlighters for reading newsletters quickly. “This is neat,” Danielle exclaimed. “Everything I need to do my paperwork is available. But what do I do with the paper?”
Five File Folders Save the Day
I explained to Danielle how five file folders could help her keep track of papers.
FOLDER #1—Calendar. This holds any paper that relates to an event on your calendar. No more refrigerator clutter.
FOLDER #2—To Do. If an item takes five minutes or less, then do it right now. If longer, write it on a master to-do list you keep visible. Write the tasks on the three days you can most control—today, tomorrow, and the day after. Beyond that, you never know when you’ll have time to do them.
FOLDER #3—To Decide. This file contained everything Danielle was thinking about doing but wasn’t yet ready to do. It cleared a lot of paperwork off the countertop.
FOLDER #4—Information. This file held carpool lists, the neighborhood calling tree, and the soccer schedule to retrieve at a moment’s notice.
FOLDER #5—My Interests. Here Danielle dropped in a free fitness center coupon, a decorator’s advertisement, and a phone number for a landscaper. When she had time, she would turn to this file and decide which things she was ready to attend to.
A Place for Everything and Every Paper in Its Place
We sorted the rest of the papers and decided where to store them and how long to keep them.
Danielle was getting more and more excited as she put each paper in a file folder, the magazine holder, or the recycle bin. “There is a place for everything, isn’t there?”
“Yes, and if there isn’t, you can create a system holder for it. When everything gets filed each day,” I reminded her, “either once a day when the mail comes in or before leaving work, your retrieval time savings multiplies without piles to wade through.”
Customize Your Files or Binders
Danielle and her children created a two-pocket folder—green for Gabrielle and blue for Keith—with the right pocket designated for the work that came home from school and the left pocket for completed homework and papers to return to school.
Each night after dinner, the kids went through their folders while Danielle finished kitchen cleanup. She stopped filling in forms they could handle without help, such as name, address, and phone number, and only filled out the ones that required her signature or had information specifically for a parent.
Danielle charged them one dollar for any extra trips she had to make to school or for papers signed the day they were due. Gabrielle and Keith quickly became responsible.
On-Time Paperwork Saves You Time and Money
Danielle felt a burden lift as she found another permission slip due the next day, a sizable missing check to cash, and her best friend’s birthday card. “This is exciting!” she declared. “I’m going to be on time with my paperwork, and I will pay bills online each month. I never thought of late paperwork as lost time or money.
“Keeping up on my paperwork each day is the best time-saver of all. I can read my magazines and not worry about what I might have missed doing. I can do this!”
It’s Your Time
Power Through Your Paperwork (Time Habit #4)
To set up a Personal Organizing Center, do the following:
■ Create five file folders.
■ Keep paperwork supplies handy.
■ Designate a bin for shredding and recycling.
■ Go through your paperwork until your desk or counter is clean.
Remember that today’s mail is tomorrow’s pile. Take today’s mail to your paper-management center and begin now to develop your own paper-management system.
—Barbara Hemphill