Organizing Papers
This post may contain affiliate links that, at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission from. In my career, I have come across products I enjoy using myself or with clients. I would never recommend anything I haven’t vetted, tried out, or deemed to be worthless. Thanks!
Paper Organization
The Marie Kondo Way
In most areas of the house, organizing and tidying can be a fun experience for many people. There is one area, however, that seems to be the bane of everyone’s existence when it comes time to organize: papers!
When it comes to organizing your papers, there are always more of them than you expect there to be. It’s quite easy to quickly get discouraged when you sit down to do it, seeing just how many paper items you have. Luckily, Marie Kondo has a method that can help you!
Marie Kondo advises us to “dispose of anything that does not fall into one of three categories: currently in use, needed for a limited period of time, or must be kept indefinitely.”
A great way to start implementing this is to gather all of your paper items together in one spot. Set aside a morning or afternoon (or if you have a substantial amount of papers, a whole day) where you will be dedicated to going through all of them and sorting them out. We recommend sorting them into four categories when you initially sit down to do this: currently in use, needed for a limited time, indefinitely, and dispose. Ideally, the disposal pile will be the largest one you make.
Currently in Use: For this pile, you’ll want to sort items such as the following: bills to be paid, letters in which to respond, magazine you’re currently reading, etc. Once you have completed the task related to that paper item, throw it away! Only keep these for the minimal amount of time needed.
Needed for a Limited Time: For this pile, you’ll want to sort items such as the following: paystubs, tax write offs, car warranty information, etc. Anything that you need to keep for a certain amount of time (think about all those documents that you need to keep for up to seven-ten years). These will mostly be tax and bank related documents.
Indefinitely: For this pile, you’ll want to sort items such as the following: birth, marriage, and death certificates, medical records, and anything else you foresee yourself needing to keep forever.
Once you have your three designated piles, you will want to pick one spot in your home where you will keep all of your papers. A great way to keep the three piles stored is to use these amazing zip pouches. Ideally you will use one pouch per category, but if you have more documents than can fit in one, it is okay to use two pouches for the same category. This helps to minimize the amount of space that is being taken up by all of your papers, and the pouches can easily be stored in a vertical organizer.
We hope these tips and tricks help you keep your papers neat and organized, and invite you to join the Minimize with Mae Challenge on Instagram! Once you have sorted your papers into your three categories, snap a picture and share it to Instagram using #minimzewithmaechallenge!
