Paper wars
I recently spent the better part of an afternoon making a few bags of this:
I only overheated the shredder three times.
You see, the paper in our house is the bane of my existence. No matter how I try to organize it, paper piles up in disastrous fashion. Usually anything of any importance stays on the corner of our kitchen counter until I move the pile into our spare bedroom (usually when someone is coming over). By the time I get around to pulling our tax papers together, we have piles everywhere and I have to dig.
The ironic part is that we have beautifully organized filing cabinets with folders and tabs for everything. Usually I get fueled up around the New Year and file everything from the previous year. But for the life of me, I just can’t commit to actually filing things on a regular basis.
Last year I moved one of our filing cabinets into our entryway coat closet thinking that its proximity to incoming paper would help the filing factor.
Sadly, it didn’t. It sure looked nice for a week or so, though.
So, what is a girl to do? Well this girl is kissing most of her beautiful file folders goodbye and just saying “no” to paper. Here’s how:
- I’ve gone paperless on any of our accounts that offer it, therefore eliminating paper before it even comes in the house.
- I exclusively pay bills online.
- At the start of 2011, I began tracking all of our spending using the “budgeting and tracking” section of our online banking. This means that I can categorize expenses as soon as they hit our account, and tally those that are important to us, or important for tax purposes (i.e. Instead of keeping our medical bills until the end of the year for taxes, I just categorize our payments into “Healthcare Expenses” and at the end of the year I can print a report from that category).
- For any accounts that don’t offer paperless, I promptly put the bill in my bill-paying notebook and then shred it as soon as I make the online payment. I mean who really needs to keep a year’s worth of cable bills? In the off chance that I need a copy, I’m sure they can send me a new one. And I have to tell you, there is something decidedly more rewarding about shredding than filing.
- Any documents that come into our house that are important or necessary for tax purposes are being saved in a bin in our pantry. So far this method is working for me, allowing all of the “to be filed” paper in one hidden, yet highly accessible, place (you know, next to the bin of baby bottles). I’m hoping that this bin is big enough for the reduced number of important papers we gather in one year’s time.
I’ve already identified what could be the demise of my grand plan. Eventually that shredder is going to need to be emptied and I tend to procrastinate on those things. I already have visions of a “to be shredded” pile sitting on the floor next to the shredder for months. But I’m going to do my best to not let that happen.
Any bets on my success or failure? How do you wrangle paper in your house?
Disclaimer: You should probably check with your own reliable sources about what documents you should keep and file instead of shredding; I’m just sharing my plan, which may not work for everyone. I’m no tax professional, that is for sure!
I have one bid that sits on top of our filing cabnet and once it’s full, it all gets filed. Seems to help a lot!
I also pay as many bills online and do not keep monthly utility stuff. We don’t have credit cards so thats less mail also.
But I can’t seem to stop that darn pile on my counter no matter how hard I try! Kindergarted is not for the “green” at heart… the amount of paper that my son brings home daily is unreal!
I really like the new look to the blog!
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Amanda M. Reply:
March 28th, 2011 at 8:49 am
One “BIN” not “BID”, sorry!
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My husband and I are notoriously bad about filing paperwork. We have piles of paper in our kitchen and all over our office. He spent some time dealing with it this past weekend but it never seems to end, even though we also pay our bills online! I have often wondered whether or not we really NEED to save our utility bills…..
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I pay all of our bills online but some of them (like our PSE&G utility bill) always comes in paper form. Since I can’t get that one online it seems, i keep it. And then I keep a copy of all of my medical bills because you never know when you are going to need them.
Right now we have a small bin on the kitchen table to put things in there until they get downstairs. Once they get downstairs (where the filing cabinets are) there is another bin. Once I get sick of seeing all the paper, i start filing. When it comes to shredding, we shred immediately (or at least once a week) because I don’t want to add the stuff that needs to be shredded to my giant pile
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Veeerry impressive! I have to take my cue from you! LOVE the redesign, by the way!
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I have no advice or thoughts on this. Paper is my nemesis. Hate it. I have a file box with a PILE of papers on top of it. So much for organized. I like your system and wish you luck! You can do it!
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I have a big stack of “to be filed” papers in my classroom…which is only slightly larger than the “to be shredded” pile. I have a good idea of how I’d like deal with our papers at home…now I just need to get someone else on board.
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Filing and shredding is also a thorn in my side. I am much better at stacking. And like you hiding the stacking. It never ceases to amaze me how much paper two people can accumulate in such a short time!
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Love your redesign! Paper is seriously my nemesis and biggest clutter creator. I always have grand plans of filing, but of course it never happens. Last night I purged a bunch of it, but I think getting a shredder and just taking care of it on a weekly basis is probably the way to go. We currently have a bag full of paper with sensitive info that we don’t want to recycle, but we don’t have a shredder. I think I need to suck it up and go buy one!
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My husband sorted through all of his/our papers and created a “to be shredded” bag. That was a few weeks ago. The bag’s still sitting in our kitchen, on top of the security file box my parents gave us for Christmas (ever the practical gift-givers), which has yet to be removed from its packaging! We’re doing really well, hah!
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Mail (and other items) come in to the kitchen where they get sorted as to bring downstairs (to the office), recycle, and shred (also in the office downstairs).
My recycling is pretty easy, a paper bag in a non-prominent area in the house and goes out every other week. No problem.
The bills and shredding go with me on my next trip to the office and go into two piles; stuff to go thru and stuff to shred.
Shred pile stays for a week and gets larger – but then it all gets shredded.
Bills and important papers are perused and then filed in an accordion file under a category such as “gas”, “cable”, “mortgage”, etc.
At the end of the year, I go through the accordion file and really file the stuff in the filing cabinets…which are getting too thick with papers at the moment and I’m going to have to go through those soon.
My husband and I keep spreadsheets with energy usage and some formulas as to figure out how much our budget will be the next time they reconcile it. Once in the spreadsheet, we shred the paperwork. If the energy bills are online, we make an electronic copy (.pdf) of it and file it in a folder called Utilities (and then sub-folders depending on which Utility, which year, etc.) that is on our computer. We are a bit geeky that way.
Keep all medical – for FSA refunds.
Keep all receipts – you never know if you’ll have to take the item back or if you will be overcharged for something.
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What excellent, simple tips. I’m currently working to curb the paper also. I’m in such a “throw it away” mood, not much of it is surviving!
Now I just have to convince my hubs to do the online bill pay like you do
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I promptly forwarded this post to my house, as this is ongoing source of angst for me (for him though, not so much). His response was, “doesn’t the baby keep her busy enough..just sayin.” I am planning to sneak in a shredder, and beat him home after work =)
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this is JUST what we need to do.
we, too, have a pile of mail in the spare bedroom. and a HUGE pile of mail on top of our dresser in our bedroom. the pile in the bedroom is starting to fall of the dresser so i may need to file/shred sooner than later…
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I used to have piles and piles of paper everywhere, but I read once to only handle paper once. So once you have it in your hands deal with it. Now this doesn’t always work, but I keep reminding myself of that, so when I pay a bill, I put it right in the file. Tada! Done! That doesn’t mean I don’t have papers all over my desk from time to time, but it definitely does help! Happy shredding!
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Erin .. good for you! Like you, I’ve gone as paperless as I can. I’ve also put everyone in the house on the “no call registry” and have used the optout website. I also shred as soon as the bills are paid, but I usually just use the shredder at work. We do have a shredder at home as well; I just can’t find a good location for it. I don’t have an office, so it’s currently sitting in the my kitchen/dining room/office/family room .. my house is small.
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