The Myth of Going Paperless: Hacks to Free Your Space

No Junk Mail

Get a piece of masking tape and write “No Junk Mail” and affix this to your mail box. Believe it or not, post office workers obey this instruction. It won’t stop all unsolicited mail from getting in your mail box, but it will reduce it.
If you have a private box, you can leave these instructions in person at the post office where you pick up your mail.

Recycle Bin

Get in the habit now of making a decision the first time you read your paper work and have a recycle bin in place to toss papers that you do not need to keep.

Paperless Billing

Switch over your monthly bills to digital (you’ll be forced to eventually) and create a habit or routine to make sure you know how to find and pay your bills as they occur. We’ll dive into Digital Organizing in a later blog, if you want to learn more on this topic.

Let Go

The most challenging step of going paperless is letting go of the backlog of paper work you have in your spaces. If you have difficulty knowing which papers you need to keep and which papers to let go of speak with the professionals in your life with whom you trust. If you want to learn how to Tame the Paper Clutter we have an online course for that. 🙂 

Set Paper Limits

Of course keep those papers that you deem irreplaceable, but set limits on how much you’re willing to store. I personally have a hat box that I keep stored under my dresser that holds a selection of cards, notes, letters, and other memento papers that I don’t want to part with. The hat box is the perfect storage space for these treasured notes, but it has a limit in what it can hold. As the box gets full, that’s when I know I need to declutter and par-down my collection.

Paper is the most time consuming form of Clutter. That's why we created our online course How to Organize Papers: No More Paper Piles with These Tips.