4 Easy Ways to Stop Paper Clutter Before It Starts

by Amy Clark, October28, 2009 | Posted in Everyday Sense

As soon as our school year began, I knew that we were in for a paper avalanche. Two children bringing home dozens of papers a day can easily bury my kitchen counters very quickly. I am finding that the best plan of attack is to tackle these papers swiftly and to designate a home as fast as I can.

Here are 4 of my favorite ways to reduce the paper trail in our home:

Sort your papers immediately. As soon as you receive any mail or school papers, make sure to sort them as soon as possible. Shred any items with personal information on it, recycle the papers that are not needed, and designate a home for the items you need to keep.
Act on the sorted paperwork. If you are keeping paperwork, avoid shoving it into a drawer or starting a new pile on your desk. Sort the papers that you would like to keep in a file cabinet and tuck away those sweet little art projects in a bin or expandable file folder to keep them safe.
Repurpose paperwork. Sometimes it can be difficult to part with special art work from your children, but it doesn’t need to necessarily hit the trash. These extra papers make fantastic gifts for loved ones, can be made into cards or gift tags for gifts, or they can be framed in your child’s room to be enjoyed by all who visit their special space.
Stop the paper from coming in. Do everything you can to switch to paperless bills and encourage your school system to do what they can to make green efforts. My favorite spot to visit for paperless billing is MyCheckfree.com. Thanks to this great service, I do all of my bills through this site and now I have minimal statements to dispose of. Best of all, it is free…and it saves me oodles of time sorting and shredding.

As a mom of young children, it may be a long time before I can climb out from underneath the glittered glue projects and sea of homework pages. I am hoping that by tackling these four steps though, I will be able to keep the paper control to a minimum and enjoy just a few days of clutter-free counters!

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