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Reduce Clutter This week's Tip: Reduce paper clutter by setting 'retention period' for each paper. Action items: I know about one of my colleagues who moved his house twice in last one year. On both occasions he told me that he spent more than 6 hours time late into the night going through his junk mails and paper (bills, receipts etc) and shredding them before moving. Do you also have lot of junk at home? A few years back I also used to have lot of junk at home. Not knowing when to discard, I used to save all the bills and they used to get piled up and once in a while I spend a few hours to discard old ones. Later I decided to be smart. As stated in last tip, I reduced the mail I receive by signing up for electronic bills. Even then I receive some bills every month. I file my bills properly in respective files (one file for bank statements, one file for electricity bills and so on). I have set a retention period of '6 months' for each bill. Just like the daily newspaper which has a retention period of 1 day, I set my own limit of 6 months for all the bills I receive. When we receive today's paper yesterday's paper becomes old and it will go the stack of old papers. In case of bills when I receive new bill, the oldest bill goes to shredder (waste basket) and the new one goes to the top of the file. This way at any time I have only 6 months bills in the file. And also all junk mail is shredded the day it arrives and there is no pile up. This method is a combination of two tips I read: Tip 1: As suggested in time management books,
handle each paper only once: Read it, Act on it OR file it OR discard it. Summary Reduce clutter by being smart in handling paper. Last week's tip: Go electronic or online wherever possible and reduce clutter. Reminder: Did you sign up for any automatic payment or electronic billing to take control of your clutter? |