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It’s amazing how quickly bills and other mail can pile up on your counter. Here are some tips for getting the paperwork in your house organized:
1.) As soon as you get your mail for the day, immediately separate the mail into three piles: bills, reading material, and junk mail. We all know what bills are. The reading material would be any magazines, coupons, or anything else that you may want to keep to look at later. The junk mail would be any unsolicited material that you
don’t want, such as credit card applications, advertisements, etc.
2.) Immediately throw the junk mail away. Put the reading material in a place near the couch, in your home-office, or wherever you get most of your reading done. That way, the next time you go to that spot, you will read the material and then discard it or file it when you’re done. As for the bills, keep a basket or folder at your
desk or wherever you sit down to pay your bills. Put the bills in order of the date they are due. Check that basket or folder each day to make sure they get paid on time. If you do this with your mail immediately each day, it will take you about five minutes at the most, and you will always be able to see your countertop.
3.) To keep track of bills you’ve paid, get a small filing cabinet with some manila folders. Label a folder for each company that you pay a bill to. After paying the bill, file your copy in the appropriate file. At the end of the year,
clean out those files that you don’t need anymore and start fresh each year. Always make sure you have some extra manila folders in case you have a new bill. That way all of your bills will continue to stay organized.
4.) Have a bookshelf for magazines or other reading material that you like to keep. After a year, if you still want to keep any of it as reference material, put it in a box in the attic or a closet where you can store it. That way, your bookshelf is also kept clean each year and doesn’t get cluttered up.
In today’s fast-paced world, it’s easy to just throw papers in a pile and worry about them later. But just throwing them in a pile can create more problems and headaches later. Taking just a few minutes to organize your
paperwork each day can prevent a lot of future problems.
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