Organizing Paper: When Should You Scan and Shred?

When should you scan? and when should you shred?, aren’t the first questions you should ask when organizing paper. However, clients often ask these questions early on in the conversation, so I am going to answer them. I understand the frustration that leads to these questions. The paper accumulation is overwhelming. They client has had it and believes there has …

Organizing Home Archives in Fairfield County CT

Welcome to the final exciting episode of organizing paperwork clutter at home. In this, the conclusion, we address organizing home archives in Fairfield County CT . In last week’s cliffhanger, I had just extracted my 2017 tax-supporting material in my home office. I conquered my 2017 taxes, relinquishing the need for all my statements.  Organizing choices Now, I could have …

Organizing Paperwork Clutter at Home

Organizing paperwork at home may be easier than you think. There are no shortcuts, but organizing paper is easier is you have a plan.

Organizing Files by Temperature

Organizing tips for spring cleaning.

This video is about organizing files by temperature. A plan for circulation is clarified by identifying 1. Red hot Running Files, 2. Warm yellow Sitting Files, 3. Cooled green Sleeping Files, and 4. Cold blue Dead Files.

Organizing Your Receipts

My plan for organizing receipts is actually a perfect example of my ultimate organizing approach.

Your #1 Annual Organizing Habit

I posted this video about this time last year, but it’s worth repeating. I have since come to the conclusion that rotating your files is the number one annual organizing habit.

2

Organizing Files By Temperature

Our clients often get ahead of themselves. I mean WAY ahead of themselves. We may be looking at 30 bags and boxes of papers and the client will ask, “Do you recommend color-coding my files?” What I’m really hearing in their voices is “CAN we color-code my files PLEASE?” It’s as if a magical rainbow of colors will make the 30 bags and boxes disappear.

When to Organize to 100%

I have written a lot on the subject of perfectionism-as-a-barrier. People often confuse organizing with a quest to be perfect and that’s a mistake. Organizing is more about managing priorities effectively. That said, although we usually don’t have the time to be perfect, there are times when managing priorities benefits from pushing things to 100%. Here are three examples.

Points Of Compulsion To Stay Organized

It is impossible to stay organized without action. If there’s no action on paying bills, the mail will pile up; if theres no action on the laundry, the clothes will pile up; etc. Certain points of compulsion are necessary to ensure that these actions happen.

1

Organizing A Wider Cast, To Last

We usually get called in for organizing help over a fairly limited problem: a cluttered garage, a pile of papers, or to-do’s not getting to done. It’s good to have a starting point, because it means that you have chosen a priority. However, to make the organizing last longer requires reaching a little further.

2

Organizing Your Way Out of a 3 Ring Bind

There is a time and a place for three ring binders. Simply put, when you need to bind reference material, you should use one and when you don’t need to bind reference material you shouldn’t. So what would be some good examples?

5

Organizing a Path Beyond Creativity

Much has been written recently about a study done by Kathleen Vohs, at the University of Minnesota, that finds a messy work environment promotes creative thinking. Here’s my two cents.
I’m a fan of evidence through science, but I am skeptical of these results. Furthermore, I would argue that creativity is rarely the biggest challenge.

5

3 Filing Supplies I Hate and Why

On the whole, I try to avoid negative posts, but I’ve had it these guys. The organizing solutions we provide, mostly come down to editing and approach, but sometimes they are purely structural. It could partly be that you are just using the wrong supplies. Over the last ten years of organizing, we have found these three culprits used in hundreds of homes, as indispensable organizing conventions. Indispensable they are not.