Managing Paper

There are several principles that can be used to help manage the paper in your life:

• If you must save paper for your work (that is you are a writer, teacher, historian, or serious hobbyist or some similar activity), you need a sufficiently large filing cabinet to hold all of it. Piles of paper are essentially unusable. More paper than fits in your filing cabinet? Get another or get rid of the paper (probably a good idea anyway).
  
  
• Every document that is saved should earn its way into your files, that is it should do something specific, important and concrete for you, and not just take up space and deteriorate into dust; the more vague the reasons for keeping things, the less real use they are likely to have
  
• All paper should be classified into categories as soon as it comes in the door: junk goes to the recycling bin/bag immediately, papers that stay get tagged with one of three labels:

a.‘Dispose by ____’ for things like sales flyers (you probably do not need to actually write the date since they are usually already dated; but a mental marker or special tray or bin is needed so that you know to get rid of them after the sale is over (if the sales flyer is not for something you do not specifically and actually NEED, toss it immediately – why leave temptation lying around?)

b. Action – papers that need some response from you, such as paying a bill or making a call, should be listed on your daily planner (what, you don’t have one?! Sign up for my Time Management class at http://www.ccsf.edu/Services/Continuing_Education/othersemester/fall/index.html to learn the value and techniques of this critical resource), then put it in an appropriate tray or bin until you do the task required (if the task would take five minutes or less, it is a good idea to do it as soon as it comes in to save time later)

c. File – it helps to jot the title of the file that the document will go into across the top of it (ex., FINANCES {section; perhaps just indicated by the color of the marker used to write the name}, Bank Statements, or MEDICAL – Lab Reports). This way, if you are interrupted before you get the item into the file, you won’t have to rethink where it goes, and later, if you take the document out of the file, it will be easier to put it away (of course, if you never remove a document from the file, that is a pretty clear indicator that you do not need it).

• At the end of each day, spending 15 minutes going around your space and putting away any loose papers (actually, this is a good rule for any loose objects) will keep piles from building up
  
  
•  Papers kept because they might be ‘interesting’ to read ‘someday’ need an expiration date, such as one week, or at most, one month, by which time you have either read them or you assume that they are not really as interesting as you thought (proof! – they weren’t interesting enough to get you to read them in the allotted time). Whatever might have once made them interesting no longer pertains so out they go. The world is full of interesting things and if you hold onto those from the past, you will likely miss those in the present and future. Also, if you did not have time to read these items when they were new, when do you think you realistically ever will? Life has a way of keeping us all pretty busy, enough so that ‘someday’ tends to never happen.
  
  
• The best way to deal with much of the paper that inundates our lives is to prevent it from arriving on your doorstep in the first place. Cancel subscriptions you cannot keep up with, get off mailing lists for catalogs you are not going to buy from, block credit card issuers from bothering you, etc.
  
  
• Once a year at least, evaluate the usefulness of your trays/bins (as measured by ‘do you use them?’ and ‘do they work for you the way that you need them to?’), your filing system (use the same criteria as above), and the documents you have saved. Be ruthless about disposing of anything that is not in actual (rather than intended or imaginary) use or working properly. The easiest way to do this is to either evaluate your trays, files, and documents as you use them with an annual clean-out day session to look at those you do not use (at which time most of them should be given the heave-ho)
  
  
• All paper deteriorates over time so if you plan/need to keep documents long term, several measures will help keep them readable:
  - newsprint is among the most fragile papers so really important articles (and what are they in this era?) are best copied, then only save the copy
  - put all really important documents (like birth certificates and social security cards) in a plastic sleeve
  - review file contents every time you pull any file or annually evaluate whether any files you have not used still need to be kept
  - put the date that new documents go into the file across the top and every time you access them, put a checkmark; at the end of your review period, any document that does not have a checkmark is a candidate for elimination

PLEASE – I would love to hear your questions, adventures with applying these ideas, feedback about this issue, or requests for other topics.

©2010 Gloria Valoris

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©2010 Gloria Valoris