6 Steps to Get Household Paperwork Under Control in One Weekend

6 steps · by Homeknacks Editorial

Household paper accumulates because each individual sheet is a small, unclear decision. Keep or bin? Needed for tax? Is the warranty still valid? Multiply that by four hundred sheets and the rational response is to put the pile in a drawer and close it.

The way through is to stop deciding sheet by sheet and instead build categories first, then sort into them at speed. A two-year backlog takes one Saturday afternoon and a Sunday morning using the method below. The second half of the weekend is spent building the system that stops it coming back, which is the part people usually skip and the reason they do it again in two years.

1. 1. Gather every piece of paper into one place
2. 2. Sort into broad piles without reading anything closely
3. 3. Apply retention rules instead of judging each document
4. 4. Scan what you want digitally, and do it in a single pass
5. 5. Build a physical system with only three containers
6. 6. Set up the inbound flow so this never happens again

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