photo credit: Librarian Avenger

I hope that you have been able to take 15 minutes for yourself each day to get organized. It is a great feeling to walk in to your office (or any room for that matter) and see a clean space that is well organized. t’s really hard in the beginning to tame the mess and it may appear that the mess is growing as you get everything sorted. Keep at it and depending on the severity of the clutter you will see results within a few days.

You can get so much done in 15 minutes but sometimes finding 15 minutes is hard. At the end of the evening I like to watch t.v. and I actually use the commercial time to clean up. I figured out that a typical hour long show has 15 – 22 minutes of commercials which is the perfect amount of time to put stuff away. If you are still sorting the papers on your desk but can’t find 15 minutes, try doing it between t.v. commercials.

Your Daily 15 – Now that you are getting your desk clear it is time to start making files to keep all of your important documents in. File folders are a great tool in taming the clutter. If you don’t have a file cabinet or drawer in the desk you can get boxes that the file folders will stand up in or the type that hangs. You want everything to be organized and neat so you are going to need labels – preferably typed – on all of your folders.

File folders come in lots of different colors and a few different sizes. I like to have different colored folders for different things. I use yellow folders for my a to z folders, I use blue folders for my permanent files and I use purple and green folders for my businesses. This works for me because I know where the folder came from just by the color and I never co-mingle my personal and business files.

I have a folders labeled with each letter of the alphabet for general receipt filing and then more specific files for all of the items you need to keep like car registrations, bank statements, service manuals, pet records, warranties, and home improvement receipts (remember, you can write off home improvements against the gain on the sale of your home so save all of the receipts).

I buy Avery labels that come in sheets and fit in my laser printer. Microsoft Word has label templates so you don’t even have to know how to set up the margins. All you do is choose the Avery label number from a list and Word automatically formats the page for your labels. It’s really pretty cool. The other alternative is a label gun or label machine. I have a Brother P-Touch that works great but I prefer to use folder labels on the file folders.

So get some folders and some labels and spend 15 minutes making your own files. Most large stores carry these items and right now there are a lot of back to school sales going on so you may be able to pick up these items for a lot less.

Feel free to ask me any questions and I’ll try to help you be organized.

No related posts.