Are you sick of entering your (enter room here) and seeing paper clutter everywhere? Does it annoy you when you’re looking for that bill to pay, or school forms to sign and you can’t find them? Or how about keeping track of health expenses and you can’t find the receipts to submit.
All of this can be SO FRUSTRATING!
I have a solution to share with you that has been working for our home and it’s super easy and affordable to set up as well.
A Little Background On Our Paper Clutter Situation
Our 1940’s bungalow has zero storage. The result: All the paperwork that enters our home during the week ends up in various places in the kitchen (despite me trying to keep it in one neat place)… on the kitchen table, the island, the hutch, chairs.
This means that when we’re looking for that water bill or the school trip form we can’t find anything!
Eventually, I would love to go completely paperless. Saving trees while decluttering your home is a good thing, but until I get around to doing this I have a simple solution to organizing paperwork that comes into our home every week.
Related: Top Easy Ways to Organize Your Home – Tips from a Minimalist
THE FAMILY INBOX.
The idea of the family inbox is to only keep ‘active items’. In other words tasks you need to keep on hand now or to-do items you need to complete in the next week or so. Once you have paid a bill go ahead and shred or file. You don’t want your family inbox to be another place that all the paperwork piles up 🙂
I keep our family inbox handy so we can add to it or complete a task quickly without having to search our home.
Sick of paper clutter in your home? Set up a 'Family Inbox' and finally have a place to keep the paper you need on hand. #organized #organize #declutter #tidyverse Click To Tweet
Get Started: Organize that Paper Clutter!
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STEP 1. GATHER
To start organizing paperwork, you need to go through ALL of it. I know it will seem overwhelming, but you just gotta do it!
Get every last bit of paper clutter and put it in one place. Here’s my clutter (I actually had a lot more of it than this, but I shredded and filed a lot of it first).
STEP 2. CATEGORIZE
Once you have everything in one place it’s easy to see what categories you need to create. For example:
- Bills to pay
- Receipts
- Health care expenses to submit
- Coupons
- To Do’s
- School Forms
- Other
- To be shredded
- To be filed
I also added thank you cards, stamps, won lottery tickets and recent invites (i.e. a wedding invitation).
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STEP 3. LABEL
You’ll first need a good 3 Hole Binder with inside pockets, to use as your family inbox. Then purchase some page dividers and create your category labels for each section.
STEP 4. MAKE IT PERSONAL
I added in a weekly family to-do list, so we all know where we’re going and when. There are SO many beautiful free printable templates you can find online with everything from to-do lists, calendars, journals, etc. I downloaded this weekly planner template from elizaellis.blogspot.ca Here’s a close up of her gorgeous work…
To make your family inbox personal, have a look around. You might want to add a to-do list, chores list or grocery list. It’s up to you.
STEP 5. PUT YOUR FAMILY INBOX TOGETHER
Here are the pieces you’ll need to create your family inbox.
Paper Shredder: If you don’t have a paper shredder yet this is most likely why you have so much paper around. There are many documents that need shredding for privacy reasons. you never want to recycle anything with confidential info such as your name, address, bank info. So shred it and then it can be recycled. I put this is a clear recycling bag.
Page dividers: The page dividers are for those categories you defined earlier. It makes finding what you need a whole lot easier.
3 hole punch: You may think you don’t need a 3 hole punch in your house, but since I picked one up I’ve used it for everything from holiday crafts, to school projects and now this project.
Stapler: This is just another way to keep similar documents together within the divided sections.
Binder: Yep, you obviously need this! Pick a colour that motivates you 🙂
I’ve included recipes I’d like to make in the ‘other’ section.
Above I have included recipes from magazines in the ‘other’ section. Of course, I also use Pinterest for this (you can follow me here), but sometimes I still want to save a recipe from a magazine and this needs a home too!
That’s it. What I also like is to have a TO-DO category for myself and my hubby. Therefore I won’t have to keep reminding him of his to-do’s, I just point to the book!
Let me know in the comments below if you use a similar system for your paper clutter or if you have other tips to share 🙂
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Organizing Paperwork at Home in 5 simple steps. Our Family Inbox.
Okay! my wife and l are on-board! My job is shredding sensitive documents … l cant believe it, but l have Hydro, Gas, Credit card bills etc… that date back 7 hears haha. I am setting myself up in the garage with my trusty shredder! and a box of extra strong garbage bags. Wish me luck!
The paper that comes into my house overwhelms this busy working woman. I tend to let it pile up, instead of shredding it immediately. These are great tips! Maybe I can get myself organized!
I know exactly how you feel.
Oh my word, I am going to set up an inbox today! We end up with paper on top of the microwave, on the island, and on the laundry room counter until we can get to it. An inbox would be so much better. I have been looking for a planner too so can’t wait to check this one out. I file my paperwork, eventually but having an organized binder upstairs would really clear up the clutter. I love all your tips!
Honestly – it has made finding things SO much easier for us!! Now my husband just knows to check the binder 🙂 Job done!!
I definitely need to clean out my paper clutter. I have so much! Thanks for sharing these tips. I’m going to pin this to save for later!
This can be so overwhelming… thank you for your guidance. I’m bout to tackle this at our home!
Such great tips. I’ve set up an inbox system before, but I then I never looked at it again…umm problem. 🙂 We are good at going through things and throwing trash away, but the stuff we will eventually need just sits in a pile until its time for it. I think it’s time to open that inbox back up and actually use it!
My husband is the one who takes care of paper organizing and he is good at it too, but I needed this post to improve myself on the same. I’m not sure why when it comes to papers my organizing fairy disappears on me!
These are wonderful tips! The best advice that I ever got was “touch it once!” When you go through it, it goes it the trash or gets filed appropriately the first time.
Paper clutter is the worst! I’m going to have to try and make this when the renovations are over. Do you set aside a time to go through it weekly?
Oh I know! I don’t set specific time to go through it, but now that everything is in there I naturally go through it whenever needed. As soon as paper comes in (i.e. a receipt to keep, or bill that needs paying), I 3 hole punch it immediately and put it right in the binder. Otherwise I know it will get lost somewhere in my house!!
I need to get better with discarding or shredding items right away instead of having to go through a large pile in a month or so. I like the idea of the planning book. I wish I were that organized naturally!
Even with this planning book, there is still lots of shredding – which I hate!!
I feel like I can NEVER stay on top of our paper clutter. Thanks for these ideas. I love the idea to categorize everything and put it in a binder!
Paper clutter is the worst and I am so guilty!! Love these tips!! I need to get on it!!
Agree – I hate paper clutter. Just when you think it’s gone – more comes in!
I have a family binder and a family budget binder I love them both. This is truly a wonderful system.
Great minds think alike right?!
The best way for me to reduce paper clutter is to receive as much as I can via email or arrange direct debits. Getting ever online is my next priority. Hopefully I’ll just end up with school notes.
I agree – I would love to stop all the paper coming into the house in the first place.
Oh I SO need to do this…. At the moment my strategy is…non existent 🙂
Good to hear! Thx for the feedback.
Oh, what a great idea! Definitely an easier way to keep track of things! I like that you have recipes from magazines included too. I find some good things in mags!
-Lauren
It works out well, as long as everyone at home remembers to keep using it 🙂
I’m in the midst of doing some major shredding right now and reorgnizing some of our paperwork since we moved. I like the feeling of being able to get rid of it after so many years.
It’s amazing how fast the shredding can pile up. Good luck!!
I need to get a planner so bad! Thanks for the websites with the cute downloadables!
This is a pretty simple and do-able system that could work really well for me!!! Thank you for the kick in the booty!
Wonderful tips! Paper clutter piles up so quickly! We have an ‘inbox’ but not as organized as the one you showcased! We try and sort mail/paper as soon as it comes in either recycling, file/shred, or the inbox. I will have to try your idea!
After 25 years of parenting, this is still a huge struggle!
Ha!! I hear you 🙂
These are great tips!! I really needed this – especially this time of year!
I need this in my life! I’m going to share it with my Facebook group.
This couldn’t have come at a better time! I feel like we’ve been drowning in mail every since we bought our house last year! I now get flyers and magazines from places I’ve never even heard of! Definitely going to do something like this on my holiday break — would love to start 2018 on a more organized note. Thanks for sharing!
This is so helpful because clutter really stresses me out! I love these tips. One thing I also try to do is keep everything as digital as possible – every once in a while, I spend half a day uploading images and files to Google Drive and organize in there!
That’s such a good idea – uploading important docs to your google drive. Very smart to reduce the paper in the first place 🙂
Paper clutter is the bane of my existence — these suggestions are so helpful! Thanks !
I hear you Amy! It seems to never end!!
I can’t believe how many new paper s coming in every single day, from bills, flyers, newspapers, school’s letter, forms, receipts, all kind of things. Shredder is my best friends when I finish with the bills, but those other papers it kept piling up over the times. I ‘m glad you bring this matter up, I have to continue with the organizing task , I just started few weeks ago when it was back to school season, then “forgot” about it, hehe
I LOVE this, and definitely need to get my paper clutter under control at home AND currently at work. Thanks for the tips!
I need to add this to my weekend to do list!
Great tips…it certainly is a marathon to keep on top of ALL the paper inundating the house each day!
Great way to decrease the clutter. I recently had my husband put up two hanging baskets on the wall in my mudroom to help with the paper clutter that comes in the house. I love the idea of adding a binder to help better organize the space.
Wonderful!!! This is very helpful for this girl who tends to drown in her paperwork.
These are all great tips! I constantly struggle with paper clutter all over my house, so I’m definitely going to take your advice and try to implement some of your organizational strategies.
Thank you so much for this! I’ve been trying to tackle the paper clutter! I need to start a family binder.
love this idea. it is insane how quickly papers can just pile up left and right!
This is a never ending battle here!