DrDeClutterBlog.com

Paper, paper everywhere… over 80% of the paper most people have is either out-of-date or will never be used again.

THE 5 D’S OF EFFECTIVE PAPER MANAGEMENT
   A) Do it
   B) Delay it (File it in an action file to do with a deadline, or archive file)
   C) Delegate it (autopayments are a way of delegating)
   D) Dump it (trash, shred, recycle)
   E) Delete it (email!)

TIP: OPEN MAIL OVER “FILE 13″: The trash, recycle bin or shredder  

 - Start with your daily mail first.Quickly open daily mail right over the wastebasket, recycling container or shredder box.  - Dump everything unnecessary, then, sort and take action on the rest immediately – so it doesn’t have a chance to pile up.

Oh! Have you seen the new “Forever” stamp? They were the bell, that got old to look at. Now, they have beautiful pine cones. See above left. Yea! Those can work for Christmas stamps!

No, it’s really not too early to get out your holiday cards and get them organized and ready to mail when it’s time.  

This time of year the “snowball headed for crazytown” is already moving. If you don’t get holiday cards set up to go, they may not happen at all (again) this year!   

1. SELECT CARDS

Dig out what you already have. Are you sure everyone has gotten those cards already and you don’t want to buy more? Talk to a few friends and see if they have cards left over. Trade! What a great way to recycle and reuse like new!  

2. PHOTO CARDS

If you send photo cards, great! So, unless you have a tiny infant, you’re not going to change much between now and December! Take your picture now and have it ready. You can even order the cards in the next few weeks and have them ready to go in early December. 

 3. GET THAT ADDRESS LIST IN TOP SHAPE

Gather up all those scraps of paper with new addresses and torn off address labels and put them all together in one spot. It’s OK if you’re not putting them in an Excel spreadsheet! Handwriting, or just typing into a WORD doc is fine. 

4. TAKE TIME TO REALLY WRITE YOUR HEART THOUGHTS

To do all this work and just sign your name is a little crazy. Really write a nice long note. Starting now, you can do a one or more a day and really tell your story. 

5. FORM LETTERS

Form letters have gotten a bad rap over the years. But, personally, I like them. As an example, my friend Lisa who lives in Switzerland, is not on Facebook and such, and could of course email me photos of her kids and husband, but every year she puts together an awesome form letter with photos and stories of what they’re all doing. It’s really nice. So, I say, do it! It’s nice to see what people gather into a front and back piece of paper to share about the story of their life for the year. You might just learn something new!  

My friend Mary in Nebraska always has a really funny letter, with photos of her family and input from each member. Very fun.

Start putting it together now so that you don’t rush later and wish you had included some story, event or photo.
6. ADDRESS THE ENVELOPES

Weather you hand write your envelopes (Martha Stewart would!!), or you run them out on labels from your computer, just do it! If you love the personal touch of handwriting, then start now. 

7. LET THEM FLY!

Not only will you be ready to pop them in the mail before most people have even started thinking about Christmas, but you might even have legible handwriting because you won’t be rushing.  

8. STAMPS

If holiday stamps aren’t out yet you can hold off on stamping them until you’re ready to take the trip to the Post Office.

This is very cool!

I’m not great at using photo manipulation software as I don’t take, send and use photos that much, or if I do, I don’t crop and change them, they have to work as is.

Well, hallelujah! Here is a cool site that makes tweaking our photos more than fun! You can crop and type words on a photo and frame them and all kinds of stuff for free – and for fee if you want more, better, bigger doodads. Awesome. Thanks, Picnik! Go to http://www.picnik.com/, click on GET STARTED NOW bar and have fun!

Is a paperless society dangerous?

In the healthcare industry, for human or animal, it still is says RFID microchip expert and researcher Dr. Katherine Albrecht who launched an important new site today, http://www.chipmenot.org/ to inform the public about health problems associated with microchip implants.

And, whether it’s you or your pet, microchips have not been fully proven safe.

So, sorry folks, stick to paper files! Keep them up to date and organized.

Do you get tired of typing “www.” before the name of a site, and then the “.com” after? Well, for one thing, you actually don’t have to type www. in front of every URL anymore. Just type the name.com, or .org, or .net, whatever it is, and click ENTER, the search engine (Google or others) will add the http:// or www.

However, you can also do this! Type in the “name” of the site, no www. or .com and then key in CTR key plus ENTER. It will take care of the http://www. and the .com for you! Very cool! Go ahead, try it now! If it’s a .org, .net or otherwise, it may not pick it up, it only works with .com. But, very cool!

More than 660,000 tons of phone books end up in the trash every year. This is not good. We don’t need more in the landfills that are bursting at their seems.

What to do:

1) RECYCLE THEM:  Not all recycling systems will accept them, but if they do, both in your curbside single-stream recycling cart and at the dropoff recycle center, that’s where they should go. (If your recycle system won’t take them, see option 2 below.)

According to California’s Green Valley Recycling, by recycling just 500 books, we could save between 17 and 31 trees, 7,000 gallons of water, 463 gallons of oil, 587 pounds of air pollution, 3.06 cubic yards of landfill space and 4,077 kilowatt hours of energy. Wow! Let’s do our part today!

Or, better yet…

2) STOP DELIVERY: Don’t get them at all.

Why do we still get phone books? One of the problems is that we’re in that wobble in some parts of the world about things like this. We’re still advertising in phone books, there are still “the yellow pages”, but with technology and “progress” more and more people are finding what they need online.

So, assess how much you really use your phone book and decide to get off the list if you can and don’t have it show up on your door step in the first place. Or, if there’s just one that you want, but don’t need a stack of them, get off those you don’t care for as much or need and keep getting the one you like.

Until each online phone book site has it’s own opt-in and out page, here are numbers to call to ask to be taken off their lists.

    DEX: 877-243-8339

    Yellow Book: 800-929-3556 (you need to call every 2 years to stay off this one)

    Verizon: 888-266-5765 

    Names and Numbers: 800-592-7625 

Thank you, from Planet Earth!

Records of all the financial transactions you make—from retail purchases to home equity loans—are fed to credit bureaus, which digest the data and issue a credit report. The report grades your credit worthiness and is available to anyone with whom you wish to do business. Based on your rating, creditors will decide not only whether to grant you a loan or card but also what interest rate to charge you. The lower your rating, the higher your interest rate.

You’re legally entitled to review your report, and you should do so. Errors are frequently made and should be corrected. To order a copy of your report, contact any or all of these major credit bureaus:

Trans Union   1-800-888-4213   www.transunion.com
Experian   1-888-397-3742   www.experian.com
Equifax   1-800-685-1111   www.equifax.com

If you’re a homeowner and your report is excellent, find out whether you’re receiving the best possible mortgage rate. Nationwide, homeowners spend $100 million more than necessary each year because they don’t know they qualify for lower interest.

Get more helpful tips like this - to stay organized - in my new ebook, BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN!

To reduce the clutter, you need a system to organize your records. After all, records kept but not found are useless.

There are many ways to get organized. Do it anyway that works for you.

A computer outfitted with the latest financial-planning program won’t do you any good if you’d prefer making entries in a wide-ruled tablet with a pencil. If your system is user-friendly, you’ll use it.

The 2 Rules for Records Management: 

1. Use your chosen system routinely and

2. Be able to find it when you need it!

Consider creating a file for each type of financial record. You can group related records in one file—for instance, all receipts for home improvements. No matter how your system’s arranged, it’s usually best to slip receipts and updated statements into a file as soon as you receive them.

Ali Brown always shares the right stuff! “Run Your Business From Home? Here’s 10 Ways to Be More Productive” http://tinyurl.com/33ku4o6

“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!