How to Organize Paper Clutter

Hello! Our 2021 Winter Home Organization Challenge continues and this week and I’m going to show you how to organize paper clutter once and for all! We’ll discuss how to purge the paper that’s in your home now, how to reduce the amount of paper that comes into your home and how to organize the paper that needs to stay.

Use the 6/P Strategy

The 6/P strategy makes purging the paper from your home very simple. Since we’re dealing with paper and not an actual room or space, we will tweak the strategy just a bit. We will use the following words that start with “P”. Prepare, Purge, Pile (instead of Polish), Personalize, Place, and Put Back. Let me explain each step.

**Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, we will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. We appreciate your support. (disclosure policy)

Prepare

Prepare to conquer paper clutter by collecting the following items:

a trash/recycle bag

a shredder

a laundry hamper for paper you want to keep.

Purge

Go through all paper clutter in your house and throw away anything that you do not absolutely need to save. Keep reading for a list of important papers you should save.

Shred any items that have identifying information such as your address, birthday, social security number or any type of account number on them.

Put all the papers that are necessary to keep in the laundry basket.

Pile

This is the most important step for learning how to organize paper clutter. Make sure that you are only keeping papers that are absolutely necessary! Alright, so let’s sort the papers that you decided to keep. Grab the laundry basket and put every piece of paper in one of the following piles:

To keep permanently or long term

Birth/death certificates

Social security cards

Marriage certificate

Will/living will

Vehicle titles

House deeds/mortgage documents

Life Insurance policy

Tax returns (seven years)

Home Inventory List (written & photos)

Passports

To keep temporarily (one year)

Medical bills

Current prescriptions

Pay stubs

Insurance policy statements

Tax related paperwork

Currently using

Bills that need to be paid

Papers that need to be filed

Papers you need to act on/sign

Coupons

Sentimental value

Children’s school/art work

Cards

Personalize

It’s time to think about how you want to personalize your filing system and storage for the paper you’re keeping! There are tons of ways to do this but I think using zones is the best method. Here are some of my suggestions:

Set up a mail zone to keep incoming mail under control. Consider using the following items: folders, stacking trays, baskets or wall-mounted organizer

Set up a filing zone so you know exactly where to find a paper when you need it. Here are several types of files to consider: a file cabinet, expandable file folders, plastic or decorative boxes with hanging files

Set up a school zone to contain kids school papers and art work. Consider using: plastic shelves, plastic bins or file folders.

For important permanent documents that must be protected consider: a weather tight container, a fireproof box, a safety deposit box

Place

Place the trash bag you filled up in your garbage can.

Recycle or throw away the paper you shredded.

Place all of your paper piles into the type of storage container you decided to use.

Put Back

Paper clutter can sneak up on you if you don’t make a habit to deal with it on a regular basis. Make a rule to purge paper weekly and you will stay organized and free of paper clutter from now on!

You can use my handy printables to help you work through each step. All my printables are free for my weekly email subscribers.

How to cut down on the amount of paper that enters your home

Remove junk mail

The easiest way to cut down on the amount of paper that enters your home is to not allow junk mail anymore. Go to the Federal Trade Commission Consumer Information website and read about how to have your name removed from unsolicited mail and phone calls.

DMAChoice.org – Service that helps filter offers mailed to your mailbox to reduce junk mail

Catalogchoice.org – Free service to cancel specific catalogs and other types of paper mail you no longer wish to receive

Tired of receiving numerous credit card and insurance offers? Go to: OptOutPrescreen.com to get off credit card and insurance lists

Electronic billing

If you’re getting bills in the mail, switch to paperless billing. If you’re concerned you won’t remember to pay them, enroll in automatic billing.

Store electronic documents in the cloud

Another option we use is to store electronic documents, bills, and receipts on the internet in free “cloud” storage. Lots of free secure space is available through Microsoft(OneDrive), DropBox, and Google (Google Drive) among others. Each offers free signup and can walk you through how to upload your documents for safe keeping. We use Microsoft OneDrive which allows you to keep a copy on your laptop or pc and automatically uploads a copy for save keeping to the cloud. We pay about $3 a month extra for OneDrive to buy more cloud space and use it to store photos too. Each cloud storage choice above has similar options if you need more space above the free amount provided.

To get most documents to the cloud, we usually use our all in one printer’s flatbed scanner to scan documents to PDF format and upload those to cloud. Others may use a wand type scanner to scan normal and oversized documents. For other documents online or in email we choose to print them but instead of printing to paper, choose the PRINT TO PDF option and windows/mac on your laptop/pc will create PDF document instead of printing to paper.

In the cloud storage you can create electronic folders to organize your document files just like a filing cabinet. So create file folder for bills, important legal documents, or manuals etc. Name the folder for what you want to organize and upload your electronic documents to it.

Choose email Receiptoption

When you make a purchase at a store have the receipt sent to your email. No more little pieces of paper laying around or having to be removed from pockets before doing the laundry lol!! If you chose a cloud storage option mentioned above, you can then print your email to PDF and store in the could storage.

Recycle manuals

Unless you don’t have a computer or smartphone, there is no reason to keep manuals in your home taking up space. You can find manuals and instruction for almost everything online with google search.

Recycle kids artwork

If you have kids that love to produce pieces of artwork and you can’t stand to throw them away, recycle them instead! Give their art as a gift to relatives or make cards out of them. You can also use their masterpieces to wrap gifts for relatives. Grandparents will be thrilled!

How I Organize Paper In My Home

I believe the easiest way to organize paper clutter is to use zones. I use zones to keep paper from piling up. The main problem I had when we moved in this house was the mail. We don’t have a mailbox at the end of our driveway. We have to walk two blocks to pick it up and we have to use a key. This caused two problems. First, we needed a place to keep the key so it wouldn’t get lost. Second, whoever got the mail would leave it on my kitchen counter, which was driving me crazy. So, to solve the problem, I set up a mail station!

Mail zone

To solve the first problem I hung this cute mailbox on the wall inside my office. We keep the mailbox key and any out-going mail inside the box. When someone is heading to the mailbox they just step inside the office, which is beside the front door, and open the box, grab the key and anything that needs to be mailed and then head to the mail box. When they return, they deposit the mail in the storage container and return the key to the mailbox.

At least once a week I sort the mail. Junk mail goes into the trash, bills go to Rich’s desk, all other paper is sorted into my stackable trays. I have four trays for the following categories: papers to be filed, papers that require action in the near future, coupons and sentimental items like cards that I want to save.

Filing zone

I use a file cabinet to store all of paperwork we need to keep temporarily (one year). I like to use different color files for different categories.

Monthly bills-burgundy files

Home-teal files

Medical-gray files

Auto & Insurance-navy files

Banking & Taxes-purple files

School zone

Because our kids are older now, I no longer have a school zone in my office. If you have school-age children feel free to look at a past post that shows how I organized their schoolwork on a daily basis and how I dealt with sentimental art work and papers that I wanted to keep.

How to Organize paper and documents

Important Permanent Documents

We keep important documents that need to be stored permanently in this fire safe. We know exactly where they are and they’re protected should the house catch on fire.

I hope this post has been beneficial and you were able to get some great tips on how to organize the paper clutter in your home!

Blessings, Rich and Donna

**Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, we will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. We appreciate your support. (disclosure policy)