Get Rid of Paper Clutter Forever
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Do you have paper clutter in your home? Chances are you do because when I asked readers what they wanted help decluttering, how to get rid of paper clutter was the most requested topic.
I have an ugly truth to tell you…you will always have to deal with papers coming into your life and home. There will be mail, school papers, bills, invitations, owner manuals, and so on. But, the good news is that you can cut down on this paper significantly and better yet, just because it comes into your home, it does not mean it gets to stay there.
How to Get Your Paper Clutter Organized Fast
First things first, I want to talk about dealing with everything that comes into your home on a regular basis. Sure, some people start with all of the paper clutter you currently have, but I like to flip the script and start with the deluge you get everyday. Once you have that under control, you can go through the piles you have hidden throughout your house and clear those away.
Think about it this way, if you start with the large stacks you already have hidden somewhere or stacked in a corner, you’re working with stuff you’ve already mentally put somewhere else. There’s a reason it’s in a pile. It was overwhelming in the first place. Plus, while you’re dealing with the past, the new stuff keeps coming in and piling up.
Working from a clean slate gets you a win very quickly. You’ll be able to take back control and beat the paper before it becomes clutter.
Quick update - The Wannabe Minimalist Show is now live! The Wannabe Minimalist Show is a weekly podcast for those of us that want to live more minimalist, but do not want to throw everything away. On the show we explore our relationship with clutter and what it means to be intentional about the stuff we let into our homes, lives, and relationships. Click here for episode 7 where I discuss how to get rid of paper clutter. If you’re like me and enjoy listening to podcasts, I’d love for you to give it a listen and let me know what you think. You can find this episode and all of the other Wannabe Minimalists shows at LittleGreenBow.com/iTunes.
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Clearing Daily Paper Clutter
Tackling the paper clutter that comes into your home starts with the mail and paper that comes home from work, your hobbies, or your child’s school. Here are the steps you need to take when dealing with these daily papers.
Step 1 - Process Paper Clutter in a Central Location
First, you need to have a central place where you keep and deal with paper that comes into your home. This is where all incoming mail and school work should go for processing. Don’t worry. Processing is not as scary as it sounds.
In this central place, I also include a family calendar for a quick look at your family’s to do’s and activities. I like to call this your family command center. Click here for more ideas on how to update your Family Command Center.
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Step 2 - Sort You Daily Mail Clutter
The second step is to actually make a decision about all the mail that comes into your home. I’m not gonna lie - mail is one of the most difficult paper clutter monsters we have to deal with because it comes in everyday and must be dealt with. Otherwise we will be left with mounds of paper everywhere. You may be in this situation now.
To start sorting your daily paper clutter, you will:
Collect your mail everyday
Sort your mail immediately when you get in the door. It only takes a minute. Do not leave it in a pile by the front door or on the kitchen counter.
Open all items like bills, cards, invitations.
Create a central area where all of your papers will be kept - I love a three tiered paper sorter to make this task easier. I will link to an example in the show notes so you can get one if you need it.
Clear out your paper and mail sorter on a weekly basis
Now, I’ve gotten to a place where I can batch our mail pickups. We live in a townhouse so the mail is in the courtyard and not attached to our home or at the end of our driveway, which means daily pickups are not as convenient. Since life can get pretty busy, I prefer to pick up our mail and sort it once a week. This is possible because we have set up our bills to be paperless - we’ll discuss more in a later step. Because we have gotten our mail clutter under control, most of the items we receive in the mail are not time sensitive.
We can get you to the point where you are only dealing with mail on a weekly basis too, but that’s not how we start.
Types of Mail and Paper Clutter
Now that you know to pick up your mail everyday and sort it, let’s talk about what kind of mail and paper you receive. There are 4 types of mail and paper that will come into your home frequently.
Mail and papers that requires an action
Mail and papers to file and keep long term
Mail and papers that are trash (toss, recycle, or shred these right away)
Mail or papers that belongs to someone else
The key here is to process each piece that comes into your home once!
That means you need a system in place for where to store your papers before you file them and where to hold items that require an action step. Some people will say you need to file items right away. You may get there in the not too distant future, but for now, we just need to get things organized as quickly as possible as easily as possible.
For me that means using a tiered paper sorter, like this one. On one shelf are the action items, on another shelf are your papers to file, and on the final shelf are your items for someone else.
Let’s discuss each further -
Mail that requires an action:
This may be something like an invitation or a bill. It’s a piece of paper that requires you to act in some way.
Open all bills and invitations as soon as they arrive. Keep the one piece of paper you need and toss the envelope came in and extra items like sales info. You can even recycle the return envelope if you will be paying or responding online.
Other items you might place in your action folder or bin, might be something you want to do. For instance, say you found a recipe in a magazine you cut out to try or there was an ad for a new place in town to check out. These would be placed in the action category because you want to do something at a later date based on this piece of paper.
The trick here is to make sure you actually do it. Don’t let these items sit in the action file forever. That dilutes the purpose of the action items and you will get out the of habit of completing these tasks.
BONUS TIP -
In addition to helping you clear the paper clutter in your home, I also want to help you cut down on how much mail you have to process in the first place. So, if you want to get an extra gold star, take an extra minute when paying your bills and sign up for paperless statements.
Give yourself a second gold star if you sign up for automatic payments as well. This will take a task off your plate every month and cut down on your paper clutter at the same time.
Mail or papers to file:
This is where you temporarily put the papers you will store because you need to reference at a later date.
Examples of things to keep would be bills (if you cannot easily look them up online), a child’s school work (not just the daily worksheets that come in, but a project or something with a good grade, or a piece they are proud of), or receipts.
Just so you know, there are very few things we put in our to be filed section. Most of these things like bills we now receive digitally. School work is put here and sorted through on a monthly basis. I try to go through this with my daughter to keep only the pieces she likes the most. I keep receipts only for the month. Once I check them against my credit card statement they go in the trash. Receipts for business expenses are kept with our tax paperwork.
Mail that is trash:
The third type of mail is garbage. This is all of the junk mail that we all get all of the time. I will give you some ideas for how to cut down on this in just a minute, but for now, just remember to put this in the recycle bin or shred it as you are processing your mail into the piles as it comes into your home.
Mail that belongs to someone else:
If there is some mail or paper that belongs to someone else in your home - like your spouse, teenage child, or parent that might be living with you, this mail is sorted separately for that person.
You can clip it to a clipboard, put it in an “inbox” type file system, or on one of your tiers. Either way, separate it out and give the responsibility of that paper to it’s intended receiver.
I only pass on the important papers so for us that would be things like paychecks, items for my husband’s business, or things that require a signature. I process all of our bills and sort any junk mail that comes to our home. Make sense? That keeps this machine running well.
Processing Daily Mail and Paper Clutter
And then finally, lets’s discuss what it means to process these papers as they come in. I have a file folder system for each of these categories. As items come in daily, I open the envelopes, take out the important pieces I need, sort out the papers to where they belong - action items, to be filed, recycled, or for someone else.
Then at the end of the week, you file the items that need to be kept, put the action items on a centralized calendar, and clear out the file folder system or paper sorter.
This is a system that takes a little bit of time to master, but once it becomes part of your routine, it will become a habit. And just like brushing your teeth, it will feel weird if you skip it.
How to Get Rid of Paper Clutter Already in Your Home
Now that you have a plan for the paper that comes into your home on a daily basis, what do you do with paper clutter that’s already in your home?
I love the scale that Dawn from The Minimal Mom uses. It’s a scale organized like a traffic light with green for easy to replace items, yellow for slightly difficult things to replace or find, and red for things that are very difficult to replace.
Green are the papers you can easily replace or do not bring value to your life so you can get rid of them easily. This would be things like store circulars, old magazines, newspapers, flyers for events that have passed. You will not miss these items.
Yellow are things that you can replace, but you might have to look around for a little bit to find them - like appliance manuals or bank statements. But, thankfully, the internet makes these items so much easier to find.
If you don’t like relying on others to store this info - say bank statements for instance, you can keep an electronic record of these on your computer. That way you have a copy, but it’s not physical paper stored in your home. And it’s safer because your bank statement will not be sitting in your mailbox where it could get lost or taken by an identity thief.
Red are things you would have a difficult time replacing like tax statements with back up documents, birth and marriage certificates, and irreplaceable things like those from a loved one who has passed away.
In order to conquer the paper clutter in your home, I recommend gathering it all in one central place and going through it in one sitting. I know this is easier said then done though because we are busy parents with kids, jobs, partners, friends, our own parents, and our phone pulling us in a million different directions.
So, if there is too much to do at once, do one room each day.
There you have it! We looked at how to deal with paper clutter that comes into your home everyday via the mail and your child’s backpack. And we discussed how to sort through the old paper clutter around your home so you can be done with it once and for all.
If you liked this post, please share it so others can discover how to conquer their paper clutter once and for all.
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Cheers!
