Too much paper weighing you down? Try my “3 pile process” to declutter your home office!

Hey, it’s Leigh Ann here with What’s Up Wednesday. I am a Feng Shui consultant and an abundance coach. And I want to help you bring some more abundance into your life by cleaning out all the paper in your home office. With the invent of computers, we have so much more paper than we ever have had before in the past. So, today, I want to help you with a 3 pile process that I have been using for years that has totally simplified and made my dealing with my paper much, much more efficient.

I know its tax time. A lot of people have got their taxes in. but if you are in a business, you are probably still doing your taxes. So, we have been wading in paper. So why not wade a little more.

Here are a couple of ideas for you. The other thing, too, is paper is really clutter. And for my generation, I am so used to just printing things off. Then, obviously creates more clutter and you got to put that somewhere.

I have a few tips and techniques for you today. So that you can bring more new into your life. Because lots of people in their office do one of two things. They go in and they go, okay, I’m going to totally deal with this paper today. And they start wading through it. And then, all of a sudden, they get off on a tangent and they don’t get through the paper because they started doing a task. And you know, the paper sits there.

Or the other thing is, you just pile the paper up, and then you just close the office door and you’re like out of there. Out of sight out of mind. I don’t want to deal with that paper.

Let’s start with this three pile process. I’m a huge post it note fan. For anyone who knows me. Get out your post it notes. What I want you to do is go in your office and grab all of your piles of paper. Just put them all on top of each other. Don’t worry about the order.

Once you’ve done that, you’re going to make three different sticky notes. You’re going to make, shred, recycle; file; kind of hard to see, here. And action.

Then you are going to go through your pile, one by one, and you’re going to go, okay, does this need to be filed, action, or shredded, recycled. And you’re going to go through and sort them all into the piles.

Then, what you are going to do is deal with the recycle and shred first. Go and get rid of that stuff. It feels so good to get rid of that paper. Once you’ve done that, move on to the file pile. And file everything away. Now, you’ve gotten rid of 2/3 of the piles, right?

Now, go to your action pile, and with your action pile, the first thing you want to do is, any time sensitive things that you need to deal with, like you got your Visa due tomorrow, or maybe you’ve got a form that needs to be signed for the school. Deal with those items first.

Then, second, in the action pile, deal with items that take 5 minutes or less to deal with. And just bang those off. Then, whatever is left, the remainder, go ahead and knock them all off.

That’s pretty much the process. It’s pretty simple. I use it all the time. Here’s some ongoing tips to reduce the paper in your world. Obviously, having a recycle bin, so you recycle as you go, which I think most people probably do. But having it in your office, or where you tend to bring things into the home, like the kitchen, we bring the mail home. It’s a great way to reduce what you’re bringing into your office by just removing all the envelopes and packing from the mail before it makes its way into the office.

The other thing is, I like to do a shred folder. I just get one of those folders and stick it in my little baskets by my office desk. So as you’re going, you can just file stuff into shred at some point in time. Then, once it gets full, just shred it out.

Then, the other thing is, in your mailbox, I don’t know about you, but I used to get tons of junk mail. Like flyers and things. I would just bring them home and end up recycling them anyway. So just put a no junk mail sign, and it will simplify you just having to throw everything into recycling anyway. It reduces the waste.

I think that’s all. Oh, stop printing. I mentioned that earlier. Get used to having an electronic file system on your computer. And stop the madness of printing things, just creating more things to file and keep track of. So get a really good system of folders on your computer. And now, I have a mac, and you can prioritize with different colors. So whatever files you use often, you can color code and all that kind of stuff. So start utilizing that. And set a time. This is sort of like the email challenge I gave you.

Set a timer for one hour. And go and tackle your office. And, you’ll be amazed at how much you’ll actually get through in that hour if you follow this three pile process.

For more decluttering tips, I’ve got a link that’s leighannbetts.com, so go check it out. Some more decluttering techniques. Until then, go declutter. Have a great week! Talk to you soon!

Photo by Christa Dodoo