DrDeClutterBlog.com

“There is no such thing as a good tax.”
~ Winston Churchill

Tax time, again. I hear it in every phone call this time of year more than usual… “Kim, please help me organize all this paper. I can’t handle it!” Or, more to the point, two weeks ago I received a call from Jenna, “Kim, I will shoot myself if you don’t come and help me find all my tax stuff and get it together. I just can’t deal with this!”

Paper. Taxes. Not doing your Patriotic Duty throughout the year, one-receipt-at-a-time to stay on top of it. Life. Overload. High blood pressure. Fear. Anxiety. It’s a lethal mix.

What do you do? Please take the following guides seriously to organize now and throughout your year to get your financial paperwork and taxes ready and done, on time and with so much less stress, pain and self-loathing.

Fact:
If you haven’t started pulling your taxes together “yet” and may not until about April 14th, plan on lots of stress, fear, complaining, blaming the government and others and gnashing of teeth, thoughts about “extensions,” and wondering if people really do go to jail for not paying their taxes and by the way, “Doesn’t the government have more important things to worry about than my petty couple hundred dollars?”

Solution #1:
Stop waiting. Stop stalling. Stop procrastinating… NOW. Start doing them today… little by little. Sit on the floor or at a clean table and start dividing, sorting, culling through your receipts, putting them in their separate categories, such as vehicle, utilities, health insurance, etc. Put these in envelopes labeled for each category. When you sit down again, go through each envelope and add up the totals and write them on the envelope. Call your accountant. Be done for this year.

Fact:
What you put off creates more stress and becomes a health hazard.

Solution #2:
The magic of maintenance — I say it all the time, especially when I hear people complain about having to deal with and take care of their “stuff” – “90% of life is maintenance.” Whatever you have, buy, create, keep, use or store… must be maintained, even your thoughts and beliefs! You choose how much you want to maintain. If you don’t want a lot of tax papers to think about and take care of here are a few options: 1) hire someone to take care of them (which means having the money to pay them and trust that they’ll really take care of it); 2) use and buy less creating less paper/receipts; 3) move to a country that doesn’t have taxes; 4) see Solution #3.

Fact: Computer tax programs, they’re a good thing.

Solution #3:
Get ready for your 2005 taxes by getting ready now. Gather, organize and account for papers, receipts, etc. well in advance of the April 15 filing deadline. Keeping up with your paperwork and bookkeeping on a daily, weekly and monthly schedule gives you plenty of time for Tax Time to request copies of any missing documents as well.

Use Quicken, QuickBooks or some computer finance, banking and tax preparation program REGULARLY (weekly, monthly) to keep up with your receipts, expenses and income, investments and interest so that at the end of the year, like magic, you can click on REPORTS and PRINT and vwalla!! It’s all done. Incredible! Yea technology!

“This [preparing my tax return] is too difficult for a mathematician.
It takes a philosopher.”
~ Albert Einstein

Fact:
Some people need to have chaos, drama and negative experiences in their lives to feel alive.

Solution #4:
I know several people that I simply stay away from this time of year. They wait until the last few weeks before tax deadline and then become maniacs. This kind of behavior and self-imposed habit is not good for the person or their family, friends or co-workers.

Waiting until March or April every year to do your taxes creates fear, stress, anger and adrenaline spikes that are seriously not healthy for your body. Stop it. Drama and adrenaline may make you feel “alive,” but they are only helping you get “adead!” You should have and want to have much more important activities that bring joy, happiness, excitement and positive adrenaline rushes to exchange for doing mundane paperwork on a regular basis.

Do what you love, take care of the “life on planet earth daily stuff” and have a happy life — you deserve it! Those around you will love you for it too!

Toss ’em (i.e., shred or recycle.)

If you’re overwhelmed with paper — of which 80% you’ll never look at again anyway — it’s not necessary to save everything. I’m giving you permission to LET THEM GO!

And, if you have piles, stacks, old files and archives, i.e. you’re not maintaining what you have and/or being too much of a packrat, you’re really not in control anyway and couldn’t find what you need if you did need it.

So, do a financial housecleaning by paper purging:

•Bills from utility companies older than one year, provided they’re paid in full.
•Credit card statements for closed tax years over 7 years. And, keep any statement that contains a charge you’re contesting.
•Pay stubs and other income-related documents for closed tax years/7 years.
•Canceled checks for closed tax years/7 years.
•Bank statements for closed tax years/7 years.
•Outdated wills.
•Documents regarding cars or other vehicles you no longer own.
•Expired insurance policies
•Expired warranties
•Outdated annual reports and proxy statements.
•Take stock: Create a list of any valuable property you own, such as jewelry or silverware, and keep receipts or appraisals with the list. Either photograph or videotape this personal property. Such documentation will help prove your ownership to an insurance agent if anything is stolen or destroyed.
•Consider letting all paper statements go that you can get from the bank or company, hospital or job at the end of the year if you need just the last statement anyway.

Here is a good crosscut (recommended) paper shredder into which you can also shred credit cards.

If you have credit cards to pay off, "should" have more money at the end of the week than you do, or don't know "where the money goes!", then take control by creating a realistic budget. You an create a budget with paper and pencil or you can take advantage of computer software that features fast and precise calculations (of what you enter).You have to do the doing either way -- of entering your numbers and "telling the truth" on paper -- but in the long run it's worth it and will help build your self-esteem, personal finance knowledge and confidence in your money management skills.

Do you hate filing? If you are like most people today, managing the paper in your personal and business life is quite difficult. It is challenging to know how to file the paper so you can easily find it later and there is so much of it. The filing systems that you tried in the past simply didn’t work and quickly became a paper management nightmare.

Difficulties with getting organized, filing and paper management can cause you or your employees to waste up to 150 hours per year! 

The paperless office? Hasn’t happened.

Scanning solutions? Costly and very difficult to implement.

Storage for many documents a breeze? Signed contracts, presentations, etc. must be kept in their original paper form.  Some people are uncomfortable with scanning solutions due to the possibility that they could lose everything in the event of a technical malfunction.

Old filing methods in business are out of date.

What if your administrator (the person who knows how everything is filed) quit? Most offices would really suffer. . . but not if you have The Paper Tiger software!

The Paper Tiger software is a powerful filing system that uses the power of your computer to help you get and stay organized. Tens of thousands of companies have discovered this filing system – they use the power of their computer to solve their problems with managing and sharing paper files.

This Product Does NOT Involve Scanning Your Paper Documents
If office organization, time management, records management or document management is a challenge for your company, this product can make your life much easier.

The Paper Tiger software is so simple – the concept is brilliant. You use the power of the computer to index your hanging file folders. Nothing could be easier – once you use the system, you will wonder why you did not do it this way all along. The indexing method seems strange at first, but once you try it, you will see how powerful it is. Now you can download and try this amazing filing system software in its latest version 4.1 absolutely FREE for 10 days!

Try it and stop the chaos today!

PS - I’ve known the creator of this product, Barbara Hemphill, for over 20 years. She is the author of several books, including Kiplinger’s bestselling “Taming the Paper Tiger” book series.

Some rooms are small or we just need to see our tools at a glance quickly. This over the door organizer is helpful in craft rooms, offices and kids rooms to get and find what you need easily.

 HELP! Too many websites, newsletters, blogs and other online sites that need a user-name and password can be maddening. Ever forget one and waste a bunch of time and energy trying to remember it and keying in possibilities?

Or, maybe you have little slips of paper with your passwords and web addresses stacked up or stuck to your computer, or in a dog-eared notebook. Not the most efficient system.It really isn't your brain's job to keep track of all those. You need a "system." So, what to do? Two that I recommend are below.

It can be worse, much worse, than packratting paper in respect to numbers. Collecting free information (stuff) and ebooks, pdfs, photos, clipart and info-data from online and your own braindroppings . . . it can all become a blur of e-clutter and overwhelming. If the amount of data in our computers was recreated in paper form, we’d have to move out of our offices several times over!

Right up there with “I wish my house would burn down so I don’t have to deal with it,” is “I wish my computer would just crash so I don’t have to figure out what to do with it all!”

The reality is, you’ll never see, use or need over 80% of the paper you have. This is just as true for digital data files and folders, i.e., you can only utilize and look at so much information that you collect in one lifetime! 

So, it’s time. It’s time to take control of e-clutter, simplify and get organized. Here’s what to do:

1.  Plan and Purge.

30 - 45 minutes a day is a good starting point. Schedule uninterrupted time to do this and stick to it. It will feel great when you’re done. You’ll feel lighter and relieved!

2.  Change habits for more open space and a simple digital life.

To keep your computer lighter in the long run, free of e-clutter and e-junk, you’ll have to stay vigilant to collecting and saving as… again.

Just as with material items you need to ask yourself:

- Will I ever use, look at or read this again? (Or, for the first time!!)

- If so, how and when?

- Can I find this online again or somewhere else and not keep it on my computer?

- If my computer crashed and it was gone forever, would I even remember it and miss it? If so, why?

This is about being more conscious and awake to your gathering and collecting information. Use your delete key more often! 

3. Develop purging routines.

Maintaining a clutter-free life means developing new routines and habits, which means planning in regular e-house cleaning of your digital files. 

- Target one folder at a time. Some folders can have many sub-folders, so one at a time can be a big job. To keep from overwhelm, set aside some time each day for mini-purges. 

- Really focus in and choose only the important stuff, and delete/trash the rest.

- Sort out the important files and put them in a separate, temporary folder. After you’ve deleted all the non-essential files put the essential ones back where they belong and delete the temporary folder.

4. Put purging reminders on your calendar for new jobs and maintenance.

Thank you, Leo Babauta for some great ideas.

I accidentally bought a box of 10 rolls of Scotch(TM) Removable Magic(TM) Tape once, yeeeeaaars ago. I still have three of them left. It was a great accident!

This tape is wonderful for adding notes to my day-timer, a calendar, to a card or letter, anywhere you want to tape something up “for a while” but not damage the note or the surface getting it back off. It’s like sticky note glue.  It’s also good for scrapbooking as you can use it to hold photos and embellishments in place before deciding that’s really where you want them. Try it!

Great for back to school stick-it notes too in your academic calendar.

• How much time do you waste moving paper, files, doo-dads and gadgets around on your desk or work area, keeping you from your work?
• If you work with others, do they stare at you hoping you’ll get the hint to clean up “your area?”
• If you work at home alone, is your “collection” of ideas, paper, files and piles stopping you from your best business work and distracting you from your deserved success?

Managing your work area efficiently is equal to managing your time and energy efficiently.  

Everyone is different about what works for them, but pretty universally when you have a clean, neat work environment your efficiency will increase by at least 50%. 

Here are 4 Keys to Work Space Efficiency

1. Decide what tools, gadgets and equipment are essential to your work in order to function efficiently every day.

Do you need three cups full of pens, pencils and markers? Cull them out and choose one or two of each that you will use, and enjoy using and put the rest in storage.

2. Keep only those items you use every day on your desktop. 

This would include: Telephone, day planner, computer, printer/scanner/fax, lamp/lighting, writing tools, necessary paper/sticky notes, necessary working files, beverage!

Extras include: Personal mementos, photos.

What makes your job flow is what is necessary for you. Each job is a little different. If you are an artist you will have entirely different work tools and supplies on your desk or work surface than a sales person. 

3. Arrange your desk top for peak performance.

The arrangement of your work area can make a break the flow or your day. 

4. At the end of each day take 15-20 minutes to clean off your desk, making it shiny and happy, ready for the next day of successful work and business. 

Remember, when you have a clean, neat work environment your efficiency will increase by at least 50%.  Try it and see how much you like it!

If you’re a paper-loving, note taking, writing, visual learner and got-to-touch-it-to-remember-it person, paper and pencil will be the way to go.

If not, there are plenty of toys and e-gadgets to use to keep track of your to do list.

The bottom-line, no matter which one you use (neither is better), is that you 

1. use it!

2. keep up with it

3. follow through on your list items

4. complete them

5. scratch off or delete the ones that you realize you just will never do (delegate those), or don’t care about anymore.

6. do the happy dance when you scratch things off! This is a must!!

So, the deal is - pencil or plug-in - you still have to DO it!

Still not getting it TO DONE?

If you stumble on any of the above, and still aren’t getting your “its” done, you either need a better system (I can help you with that), or you are dealing with “inner clutter” and getting stuck, procrastinating and “putting off” (I can help you with that too!)

I offer hands-on organizing, Colorado click here.  and I travel to your home anywhere, click here.

Telephone coaching, click here.

And my new 6 session Audio Self-Learning Program, How to Lose Your Big “Buts!” (as in “I’d get my TO DOs done, “but…”), click here.