TRAINS

Although a lot of our personal admin can be taken care of online, a surprising amount of paperwork still piles up around the house: receipts, statements, the handbook for that angle grinder. If you don’t have a system for sorting these documents, they can soon take over any flat surface they can find. (On the plus side, though, covering things with paper does cut down on the dusting.)

Getting your administrative shit together is easy, though, and enormously satisfying – especially if you own a cross-cut shredder. (Just don’t shred the user guide first.)

“IT ISN’T NECESSARY TO IMAGINE THE WORLD ENDING IN FIRE OR ICE. THERE ARE TWO OTHER POSSIBILITIES: ONE IS PAPERWORK.”

Going through mountains of documents can seem like an onerous task, but tackle it in these three steps and you’ll soon be in paperwork heaven.

1 Declutter: Work out which papers you really need to keep copies of (see p. 35).

2 Develop a filing system: Yes, like visiting the dentist, filing papers is intensely boring, a bit scary and sometimes painful – but it’s also necessary.

3 Get into good paperwork habits: With a little discipline even the most hardened admin-phobe can get into a good routine and stop piles of paperwork blocking access to important things, such as the front door.

Sit down with a cuppa and your paperwork mountain. Weed out the rubbish: brochures, takeaway menus and leaflets for places you’ll never visit. Enjoy the pleasing thump they make as they hit the bottom of the recycling bin.

Set aside all the important stuff ready to file: official certificates, passports, wills, insurance documents, financial paperwork, medical info, payslips and other tax-related bits.

Whatever’s left over may well have sentimental value, but try not to hold on to every birthday card you’ve ever received or every letter from your aunt. Cherry-pick your favourites and keep them in a mementos box out of the way. (Stay on top of this stash in future. If you can fit something in the box then you can keep it; if not, you’ll need to sacrifice it – or something else – to make room.)

Many of us hold on to more paperwork than we need. Think twice before putting the following items away in your new, super-slim filing cabinet.

Bank statements: Go paperless if possible. You can still check your statements regularly online and berate yourself for buying that expensive pair of shoes.

Receipts: File receipts for high-value purchases (furniture, jewellery, appliances, etc.) in one folder. Keep receipts for day-to-day purchases in a bulldog clip and ditch them every month or so.

Warranties and user guides: Go through your collection and bin any that you no longer need. (It’s not that hard to use a kettle.) Bear in mind that you can access info on how to use most gadgets online. File anything that you must keep in another folder.

If you haven’t already got one, set up a filing cabinet, drawer or concertina file and clearly mark the dividers. (Avoid stacking too much paperwork in boxes or you’ll end up spending hours burrowing around for that elusive swimming certificate.)

File all your official bits and pieces, but remember that you don’t need to hold on to everything forever.

Bills: Deal with them, file them and keep them for two years max.

Work/tax documents: Keep payslips and tax-related documents for two years from the end of the tax year they relate to. For self-employment and small business records, hold on to documents for six years after you file each tax return.

Action things immediately or add a note to your diary/phone to sort them within the next few days.

Shred documents straightaway. Do not let a shredding pile accumulate or you will be back to square one!

Keep a single folder or in tray for items that are awaiting your attention, but be scrupulous about NOT using it as a dumping ground for random bits of paper.

USE YOUR SHREDDED PAPER FOR PACKING PARCELS, KINDLING THE FIRE OR ADDING TO THE COMPOST HEAP. IF YOU’RE FEELING CRAFTY, YOU CAN EVEN MAKE HANDMADE PAPER WITH IT. SHREDDED PAPER MAKES GOOD CAT LITTER TOO, BUT WILL NEED CHANGING MORE FREQUENTLY THAN SHOP-BOUGHT PRODUCTS.

Loft insulation brochures, leaflets on sky-diving, take-away food menus… If they’re not invading our homes via the letterbox, we’re picking up this literary litter ourselves and bringing it back to fill our recycling bins.

Opt out of receiving the unaddressed leaflets delivered by your postie by contacting the Royal Mail (see their website for details). Put up a ‘No Junk Mail’ sign on your front door and don’t pick up random brochures on your travels. (If the day comes when you really want to find someone new to launder your llama’s blankets, you can always check the internet or phone book.)

And, no, you’ll never get round to installing that Jacuzzi in the conservatory, so throw out that leaflet too!

We often handle our bills and banking online, so it’s important to organise our cyberclutter too. If you have an idle 5 minutes at your computer, try one of these quick fixes… and then let yourself succumb to that YouTube video of cats leaping out of cupboards.

Tidy up your desktop. Delete or file any images or documents that you’ve left scattered around and which are now obscuring your carefully chosen desktop picture.

Back up your photos or important documents.

Unsubscribe from emails that you no longer read (or didn’t request in the first place).

Clear your cache or delete old call logs from your phone.

Courses come with plenty of paperwork, but if you get yourself organised, you’re much more likely to achieve the results you deserve. It’s important to have an area set aside just for study, however compact. Make sure that it’s quiet and well-lit, with space for you to work and keep materials to hand. (You don’t want to have to move the ironing board and hedge trimmer every time you sit down to study.)

Start by clearing your desk completely and then get together all your notes. Organise them into binders, using one per topic with dividers for subsections. (An index of topics at the front will help, too.) Store these and then set up your other essentials: writing equipment, laptop, a clock, a noticeboard for timetables, etc. Ditch or rehome anything else and keep your study area clean. Job done!