Less Mess Less Stress: Organize The Paper In Your Office

Every day there are more and more pieces of paper that enter our lives! Even in this digital age, there are a plethora of papers that surface in our lives. let’s organize them!

How amazing would it be to have a system in place where each piece of paper had a home and it was easy to keep on top of all the paper that entered your life throughout the year?

When you Organize your office it will not only make your workspace easy to work in, but when you need to find something you will know exactly where it is! This is the less mess less stress factor!

There are 5 key areas in our offices that bring us the most trouble, and this article will show you how to organize these key areas so that you can clean up your office and have an office filing system that works for you!

Mail

Going to the mailbox every day can cause a build-up of paper on many surfaces in your home and office!

The goal here is to make sure that you have what you need all in one place.

When I get the mail, I quickly go through it. If the mail is addressed to the other people in the house I put their mail on their spot on the dining room table so that they always know where to find their mail.

Any junk mail goes in the recycling bin in the kitchen as I walk to the office.

In my office, I open up all the envelopes, discard the junk inside and the envelope in the recycle bin under my desk, staple multiple pages together, record information if needed into my budget software or my calendar then promptly file the piece of paper where it belongs.

Easy Peasy right?

Organize Filing

I have 2 types of filing systems that I use for the mail. Short-term and Long-term filing

Short-Term Filing

These are things that I need quick access to throughout the year. I have the files on the leftmost corner of my desk (above the garbage and recycling bins).

The files are both business and personal in nature. I am a solopreneur and there is a lot of cross-over between personal and business so it makes sense for me to have them together.

Here are the files that I keep:

• Non-Tax Misc
• Credit Cards
• Utilities
• Tax Misc
• Medical
• Contracts
• Business Visa
• Paypal
• Business M/C
• Bank
• To Be Billed
• Donations
• Accts Receive
• Payables
• Expenses

I also have short-term filing for my clients on the right-hand side of my desk.

• A binder with all the information about my group program and the participants of that program.
• A filing system for
  • Blank call sheets
  • Blank lined paper
  • Duotangs for each 1-1 client

Long-Term Filing

This type of filing is for things that you don’t need to access quite as often, and therefore you can tuck it away out of sight.

A filing cabinet where all the records are stored from past clients and the previous years. The last few years of tax returns are also kept here in case they are needed. The rest of the taxes are stored in a container in the basement. (I think you are supposed to keep the last 7 years, but I have more than that in the basement)

Training

Between the coaches or programs that you have paid for and the webinars that you choose to attend there are a lot of notes and worksheets to keep track of!

My solution is easy! Get a binder, then create dividers based on the topic as well as the coaches name or program name.

Now every time you take notes or print off a worksheet you can file it in the binder under the appropriate tab. ( I find that keeping all the information relating to the coach or program in one tabe regardless of the topic makes the most sense for me.)

Ideas

As an entrepreneur, there are always ideas floating around, and if you are anything like me, that means you are writing them down or sketching them out and that can add up quickly!

I have a folder where I keep all my extra idea papers. This is usually found tucked in the beginning of my planner or just underneath it.

The trick to this folder is reviewing the papers often, filing them in the training if need be and scheduling the implementation of the ideas and scrapping the ones that don’t make sense.

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