If you find yourself buried in piles of papers with lots of unanswered correspondence, and you aren’t even certain where to start with getting organized, you’re not alone. It can be very difficult to keep up with all the things coming through our inboxes, both electronically and on paper. Here are some basic tips on how to organize your papers and your emails. 

           Before you set up an organizational system, you will first need to sort through the things that you already have in your office area. To begin, go through all the papers on your desk (or on the floor) and put them into three piles: Trash, To Act On, and To File. Go through everything, consider it for just a moment and commit to one of these piles. Be ruthless in your appraisal of what is trash. Anything that does not require action or that you do not need to keep a record of is trash. After you sort the first time, you can go back through and re-sort the ‘to act on’ and ‘to file’ piles one more time, looking for things that belong somewhere else. Then you can sit down with the ‘to file’ pile and find homes for those items. If you don’t already have one, invest a hanging file cabinet. Make folders for different categories such as ‘warranties’ or ‘mortgage information’. Put the papers in the appropriate folder. Once they are there, that’s it! You will not have to search for those papers anymore, because you know where they are. If you pull something out, put it right back in the same folder immediately after use. As long as you stay on top of this system, it is fairly foolproof. As paper comes in, you immediately place it in the ‘to file’ or ‘to act on’ folder or the trash, rather than keeping it piled up on your desk.