Too Much Paper!
Do you dump your mail on the kitchen counter when you walk in the door? Do bills get lost and go unpaid? We suggest having a specific mail sort center so you put your mail in the same location every day. Better yet, take 5 minutes to open it. Have a recycle basket and a shredder right there and as you open the mail you can immediately make some quick decisions. Chances are a lot of it will be “junk mail” and can go right into the recycle bin. Have a basket to keep all your catalogs, newsletters and magazines you would like to look at some day which are not immediate action items. Then, we suggest having an open upright file box that contains manila folders with labels such as calls to make, to file, to read, to scan, bills to pay, pending. Each member of the family should have their own action and read (or fyi) file. We like this system because then when you do make time to pay bills and make some phone calls, you can just grab the file box and take it to your office. Here’s a quick video we took to show you exactly what we would recommend.