Yesterday I introduced you to a little series I’m calling How to Stop the PaperĀ TrailĀ  and to be perfectly honest with you, I was surprised that paper seems to be a problem for so many of us. I wasn’t sure if it was just me with the paper nemesis, and clearly, it isn’t. Paper everywhere seems to be a common thread and not knowing what to do with it all is very normal. So all of this is super inspiring and helpful to me because I know we can learn from each other and just knowing that there is someone out there tackling the same thing at the same time is fun to me too.
The first task we’re going to tackle is to get a handle on receipts – between now and Friday just round them all up and sort them.
(I can access all of my receipts via online banking and they are sorted automatically into categories,Ā but we keep paper receipts just in case.)
Want to see why I started this whole series? It’s because of this hot mess:

it doesn’t look bad, but open that itty bitty door and here’s what I’m talking about:

 

Try this for a quick sort:
1. sort them by year
2. then into categories that make sense for your filing system – my categories are:
food + entertainment
home improvements
gas + travel
medical
That’s it. Once we’ve accomplished this, we’ll worry about what to do with them next. IĀ have a very simple system ofĀ medium sized Ā envelopes (5×8)Ā – one for each categoryĀ with the year on it.
You didn’t think we’d tackle paper clutter without a printable did you?
How about a ‘paper’Ā checklist?
Click here to see all the posts in this series.