Blog Archives

Subscription Prescription: A Remedy for "To Read" Mail Buildup

10/26/2020

I call it “To Read” mail. You could also label it “Subscription Mail”, “Browsing Mail”, or “Fun Mail”. Whatever you want to call it, this refers to newspapers, magazines, catalogs, political propaganda, and paper newsletters...mail that requires no action other than to peruse it if and when you feel like it. Because reading it is purely optional, we tend to set it aside to enjoy with a cup of coffee or when there’s just more time. However, “when there’s more time” is a nothing but a mirage. So it sits...and sits...and sits...collecting dust in a pile somewhere...accumulating until the cluttered buildup forces us to finally take some action.

The good news is that we can let ourselves off the hook for reading it anytime we want by simply plopping it into the recycle bin. Yet the bad news is that very few of us can do that without experiencing some level of guilt. Why is that?

I suspect a combination of having committed yourself to reading it and FOMO (fear of missing out) is at play here. When you set aside each issue as it arrived, you were making a statement: I’m going to read this. You obliged yourself to take this action in the future. And you recommitted to that action every time you caught a glimpse of it and chose not to throw it out then and there. Even if you began reading it, the unspoken promise to finish it later has dwelled deep within your semi-conscious brain, even as you continued piling newer issues on top of it. Abandoning that goal weeks, months or even years later feels like failure. Besides, what if there’s something important or compelling lurking within those pages that you’ll miss if you never complete your mission? You could be allowing the perfect double chocolate mousse parfait recipe to slip right through your fingers! You could end up with the only home on your block with a yard lacking the latest trend in garden gnomes, all because you missed the big sale in last summer’s Gnomes R Us catalog. This, my friends, is how we convince ourselves that we can't just take the easy way out.

Thus, you are left with a choice: continue suffering from subscription buildup, or practice routine prevention. Here’s my three-part prescription for shrinking that mass of unread periodicals and restoring a healthy balance in your browsing mail:

1. Taper the dosage - First, reduce the amount of catalogs you receive by putting yourself on the Direct Mail Association’s National Do Not Mail list, or contact the companies directly to request removal from their mailing lists. Next, cancel all subscriptions you struggle to keep up with, or switch to an electronic subscription. Finally, establish some rules to help you manage the volume of reading materials you save for later. Some suggestions:

Store reading materials in a specific bag, bin, or basket. Establish a rule that once the basket is full, you cannot continue collecting more until you make space.
When a new issue arrives, toss the old one whether you have read it or not.
Take five minutes to skim the table of contents. Tear out and save only the pages that interest you.
Write an “expiration date” on the catalog or magazine and toss it out when that date has passed.

2. Use as directed - Create a plan for when and where you will actually read these items. Work it into your daily/weekly routine. If necessary, put it on your schedule and create a reminder to do it until it becomes a habit. Whether it’s reading the paper on your train ride into work, setting aside 30 minutes to browse through catalogs in bed each night, or reserving an hour each Sunday afternoon to curl up with your favorite magazine and a cup of tea, having your strategy planned out in advance will increase its effectiveness.

3. Discard when expired - Once you’ve read it or let it expire, get rid of it! The easiest solution is to simply recycle your old reading material, but here are some other alternatives:

Offer it to a preschool for arts/crafts,
Give it to someone preparing to move for use as packing material
Take it to an animal shelter or use yourself in pet cages
Shred and use for mail packaging
Share with a homeless person
Leave in a doctor’s office waiting room (black out your name/address first)
Freecycle it
Just make sure you don’t keep it around to clutter up your own home once you are done with it! Also, be considerate and ask first before dumping it onto someone else.

With unlimited refills of this prescription, even fighting subscription buildup will be easy peasy.

Don't miss out! Subscribe to the EPL Blog to get each new post delivered straight to your inbox.

0 Comments

Controlling Your Paper Keepsakes

10/19/2020

0 Comments

Every item in your home should serve a purpose. If it doesn’t, it is only in your way and should be purged. That goes for your paper keepsakes as well. The purpose of keepsakes is to preserve moments from your past that reflect who you have been, are and will become. So many people struggle to maintain control over this category of items because they lack a clear vision of what that means. The bad news is that there is no one-size-fits-all description I can give you, because it varies from person to person. The good news is that you don’t need me to give you one, because you can create one for yourself. It’s not the specific parameters that matter...it’s that you have some.

Think about your paper keepsakes like artifacts in a museum, where you are the curator. These are items that you select that tell a story about your life. Another way to look at it is to imagine that your stash of keepsakes is a time capsule you are sending to your future self and those you leave behind. What is most important to remember? What are the milestones, achievements, values and memories that have shaped who you are? Who were the people that mattered to you or impacted your life?

I recently combed through my own enormous stash of disorganized keepsakes and made some tough decisions about what to keep and what not to. I was able to pare it waaayy down from four oversized plastic bins to four small boxes (one for each member of my family). It was a lot easier once I laid some boundaries. Here are some examples of the ground rules I followed in case they may help you in setting your own guidelines:

I only kept cards and letters from people who were, or had been, particularly meaningful in my life and that contained a personal message that had touched my heart in a profound way.
I only kept memories from someone else’s wedding if those couples were still together and remained part of my life.
I only kept my children’s artwork that was particularly representative of who they were at the time. Since a lot of it fell into this category, I selected just my favorite examples.
I only saved items from my own childhood that represented important milestones, accomplishments, places or memories that had shaped my worldview. My selections had to trigger more than just a fond, fun memory.
Anything I had completely forgotten about or that I couldn’t quickly and easily identify got tossed immediately.
Whenever I had multiple items relating to the same memory, I kept only one or two of the most meaningful and representative.

Those were my rules. Yours may be completely different. The point is to decide what they are first. Write them down as a guide for when those really tough decisions arise...and they will. While you are unlikely to miss anything you ultimately decide to toss, making the decision to toss it can feel in that moment like deciding to chop off your own arm. Be brave and remember that avoiding that unpleasantness is probably how you ended up with such a big pile of stuff to go through.

Try some of these strategies to make it easier:

Limit your available space - Determine how much space you are willing to devote just to keepsakes. Keep in mind that for every box of memories you store, that’s one box of something else you can’t store. Once your defined space limit has been reached, it’s time to either purge or stop collecting.
Pick a number - Similar to limiting your available space, defining ahead of time how many cards, how many pieces of artwork, how many certificates of achievement you can keep will force you to select only the most meaningful.
Establish a (small) “Discard After Death” box - This is for storing items that only have meaning to you but will mean nothing to anyone else. Clearly mark it to let the finder know that its contents can be tossed upon your death. This will be extremely helpful to whomever is tasked with going through all of your belongings after you are gone. It gives them permission to ignore the entire box and focus instead on the keepsakes that will convey some meaning to them.
Involve your children - Particularly when it pertains to memories related to them, including your kids in the decision-making process not only ensures that you are making correct assumptions about what’s significant in their eyes, it also models for them how to make similar decisions about their own keepsakes. If they don’t care about or remember a piece of artwork they made, perhaps that’s not the best one to keep.
Transform it - Whether you turn a paper keepsake into something practical you can use or display, or record the same memory in a different format, there are lots of ways to honor the significance of certain artifacts without storing them all in a box where you will rarely see them. (See the shaded area below for some ideas.)

When you take the time to define what’s meaningful, you honor your past without hindering your ability to live comfortably in the present and to make new memories for your future. With a little perspective and a few basic parameters, even controlling your keepsakes can be easy peasy.

Don't miss out! Sign up to get new posts of the EPL Blog delivered straight to your inbox each week!

0 Comments

Filing Dos and Don'ts

10/12/2020

0 Comments

Paper clutter seems to be an almost universal problem. Even in this digital world, most of us still have too many papers cluttering up the surfaces in our homes and offices, with more sneaking in every single day. It’s hard to keep up! Setting up a reference filing system requires us to first answer three important questions:

What do I need to keep?
How long should I keep it?
Where can I put it so that I can easily find it again?

The answers to the first two questions can be found in "How Long Should I Keep It" document that is part of the Paper Tamer Bundle you can download for free on this site. The third requires a bit more thought and effort. All reference filing systems require some amount of maintenance, but here are tips to ensure that yours stands the test of time with minimal upkeep. (Note: The Paper Tamer Bundle includes detailed step-by-step instructions on setting up/tweaking your reference filing system.)

The Dos:

DO go paperless wherever possible. The less paper volume, the less maintenance required. You should still have a system for filing and maintaining your electronic copies, but these are generally much more flexible and require less work.
DO educate yourself. Know what you really do need to keep and what you don’t. This can not only dramatically reduce the volume of paperwork you are handling, the physical space required for your system, and the time spent maintaining it, but it will make retrieval much faster and easier too.
DO challenge your assumptions. Many of us older filers are still clinging to an outdated way of doing things. It’s much quicker and easier to obtain copies of old records from outside sources than it used to be if something we need is missing from our own files. A lot of the things we used to keep, particularly when it comes to banking records, are now readily available electronically should we need them. Consider the time/cost of retrieving something from one of these sources versus the time/effort required to maintain them in our own files when trying to decide if you need to keep it or not. Of course, you will always want to double-check with your financial institutions and advisors first before getting rid of important documents.
DO keep short-term reference papers separate. Papers like this season’s soccer practice schedule, the current school lunch menu, and others that you only need to keep for a few weeks or months should not get hidden away in your long-term reference system where they are likely to just clutter up the folders. I suggest a Short-Term Reference folder added to your QuickSort system (see Paper Tamer Bundle for more on this) as a good holding spot for these items. They will not only be handier to access here but also easier to eliminate when they become outdated.
DO use hanging folders. Placing each manila folder into its own hanging folder will dramatically improve the usability of your system. No more folders slipping beneath other folders or getting bent or wrinkled. Hanging folders slide open easily and just require less physical effort to fill and to search through. Never underestimate the role convenience (or lack of it) plays in whether or not you complete a dreaded task like filing.
DO write notes to yourself. If you have documents that could easily get filed in more than one spot and are afraid you won’t remember which place you ultimately decided to put it, write a note to remind yourself where you’ll find it and place the note in the folder you did not use. Alternatively, you can add a note to your index (see below) to help you remember.
DO keep it streamlined. You should go through your reference files every 1-2 years at a minimum to remove any papers you no longer need and to clean up anything that is misfiled. The fuller your system, the harder it is to use. Nothing kills a filing system quicker than overstuffed files!
DO create an index. Much like an index in a book, your filing system should be structured based on how you are likely to search for items later. As much as you may think you’ll remember what categories and sub-categories your system contains, you won’t. Make it easier on yourself by printing out a list of all your folders. Keep this at the front of your system as a quick reference to jog your memory later. This is especially helpful if you have multiple drawers or boxes of files. Be sure to update this index anytime you add/remove/combine folders or make other structural changes to your system.
DO try to make your system intuitive. A person of average intelligence should be able to retrieve any document from your system without an explanation of the file structure. You never know when such a situation may arise. BTW, that index will help.

The Don’ts:

DON’T maintain duplicate files for the same type of papers. While it’s okay to keep personal files in a separate spot from work files, or to maintain archive files (the ones you have to keep really long term but will probably never need to access...like old taxes) that are separate from regular reference files, you should not have two separate sets of files for the same type of papers. This will only increase the number of places you need to look for something and likely create confusion.
DON’T over-organize your files. Yes, there is such a thing as being too organized. The goal should be to make finding what you need relatively quick and easy, not to have everything perfect. If a file folder contains less than 10 documents and you know you may or may not ever need to find one of them again, do you really need to spend any extra time putting them each in sequential order? Probably not. If, on the other hand, you are likely to have to find the exact invoice in the middle of a meeting without fumbling around, maybe so. Always consider whether or not the time you are investing in that particular step is likely to yield dividends later.
DON’T keep empty folders you don’t need. Once you realize you no longer need it. Get rid of it to keep your system streamlined.

With a little bit of thought and effort, coupled with these simple guidelines, setting up a reference filing system that stands the test of time will be easy peasy.

Don't miss out! Sign up to get each new post of the EPL Blog delivered straight to your inbox each week!

0 Comments

Prevent Paper Pileup

10/5/2020

0 Comments

Piles of papers make me anxious. You will not find stacks of paper anywhere in my home. I dispose of any random slips of paper found in my pockets, purse or car as eagerly as tossing out used tissues. When I see unfiled papers, I see unmade decisions, incomplete tasks, and uncertainty, all of which provoke in me a sense of dread and anxiety. So keeping up with my daily influx of paper is my #1 organizing priority. Believe it or not, taming your own paper dragon can be as easy as changing a few bad habits and adopting one new one.

Nine bad habits that can lead to paper pileup:
1) Clipping coupons - Let's be honest...there are a very few people out there who do couponing well. The rest of us are just kidding ourselves. Unless you are a serious couponer who has a proven system that works, accept the fact that the time and effort you are wasting on clipping, saving, and organizing coupons that rarely get used before they expire might be better spent actually processing your mail instead. Toss all coupons but the ones you know you will 100% use. No, you don't need to look through them to see what you're missing. Your time is worth more than the few cents you might save.

2) Saving articles, ideas, recipes, or brochures for "future reference" - These days, very little of what we find in newspapers and magazines is not also available for free online. Chances are that it will take more time/effort for you to find a clipping you saved when you are ready to refer to it than it will to just Google it and find it online instead. Information on events can usually be found on an organization's website. Pinterest is great for finding and bookmarking decorating, entertaining, fashion, gift, and cooking ideas. You can bookmark links to relevant articles which are also often archived online by publication. If you really need to, you can maintain a list in your phone of places you hope to someday visit, helpful websites, names of recipe or other topic sources, etc. to help you find something later. There's no need to keep a stash of old clippings.

3) Using paper piles as a tickler for action items - Instead of creating an action pile, create an action file. Put the papers away and enter a reminder in your phone or calendar or on your to-do list to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. Get in the habit of consulting these tools daily, or ask Alexa or Siri to remind you. Using the papers themselves as your tickler is ineffective because over time, as the paper clutter increases, they are likely to get lost or overlooked. By filing them, you will know exactly where to find what you need when you are ready to complete the task. The key is developing a system you trust for keeping your action tasks front and center in your mind, rather than on your desk or table.

4) Keeping papers out of fear/uncertainty - Do you really need to keep those old statements...receipts...canceled checks? Many people save old records unnecessarily because they think they may need them later. While it is true that there are definitely some important documents you should archive, many of us save papers unnecessarily "just to be on the safe side". it's worth taking the time to educate yourself on what you should keep and what can be tossed so that you can free up some space in your filing cabinet and make the filing chore less cumbersome. You'll find a downloadable guide here to get you started. Download the FREE Easy Peasy Paper Tamer Bundle for suggestions on what documents to keep and for how long. You can also check with your accountant or financial advisor if you're uncertain if you really need it. Just don't keep papers by default simply because you don't know whether or not you can safely get rid of them.

5) Saving information for others - Stop saving clipped articles for someone you think might find them interesting! Chances are, you will forget to give it to them, and they may prefer a text telling them where to find it online anyway. While it's nice that you are thinking of them, most people don't want more paper to deal with!

6) Saving papers to scan later - If you really want to scan it, scan it right away or schedule an appointment in your calendar for scanning everything and keep that appointment. Almost everyone I know with a "to scan" pile never gets around to scanning it and ends up eventually just tossing the whole pile.

7) Hoarding old magazines/newspapers - Keep only the current issue. If you haven't read it by the time the new issue arrives, toss it. If you find you aren't reading most of them, you should cancel your subscription. I'll bet you've never heard of anyone dying or suffering a significant consequence simply because they missed reading an issue of their favorite magazine...BUT, stacks of magazines and newspapers can present a dangerous fire hazard!

8) Reading/opening junk mail - Ignore the obvious junk mail! It's only purpose is to get you to buy something. If you truly need something, you'll remember without the solicitation and will seek out information on available options at the time you're ready to actually make a purchase. Tossing your junk mail will help you resist the temptation to acquire unwanted items that will only clutter up your home. If you feel a cursory glance is necessary, do it on the way in from the mailbox and then trash the sales pitch right away. It should never even touch any surface in your home!
9) Believing you have to shred everything - It may come as a surprise to many that your address is public information. Shredding everything will not keep it out of the hands of nefarious forces, unfortunately. You only need to shred items with sensitive information such as complete account numbers, your social security number, your tax ID, etc. Receipts that only contain the last four digits of your credit card number do not need to be shredded. Reviewing your credit report each year from each of the major reporting companies is helpful in protecting yourself against identity theft. If you have a large amount of old papers that really do require shredding, consider paying to have it shredded, or look out for free community shredding events in your local area to get it out of your way. Invest in a home shredder and keep it handy to shred as you go so that it doesn't continue to pile up.

One new habit to adopt:
Go through all incoming papers and mail each and every day before you go to bed and decide what to do with each piece. If you keep up with this, it should not take you more than 5-10 minutes per day to keep your surfaces clear of paper clutter once you get rid of your backlog. Set up a simple paper triage system to help you keep your papers neat, organized and put away out of sight (yes, that's right...see #3 above for why this is a good thing!) until you can complete any next steps like paying the bills or making a follow-up phone call. There are specific instructions in the FREE Paper Tamer Guide on how to set up and use a simple daily paper triage system to help you convert your paper piles into labeled files that are easier to manage.

With a little discipline and a large recycle bin, even preventing paper pileup can be easy peasy!

Don't miss out! Sign up to get each new post of the EPL Blog delivered right to your inbox each week.

0 Comments

Subscription Prescription: A Remedy for "To Read" Mail Buildup

Controlling Your Paper Keepsakes

Filing Dos and Don'ts

Prevent Paper Pileup

Author

Archives

Categories