FREE Organizing Tips

Keep up with our latest organizing tips:

Paper Management Tips

  • Avoid looking at papers and placing them back on your desk. Make a
    decision on them, and then follow through right away.
  • Don’t keep magazines. Tear out or photocopy relevant articles.
  • Use a follow-up file (action system) to hold paperwork relating to
    scheduled tasks.
  • Invest in a Freedom Filer system.
  • If you handle paperwork more than twice before taking action on it, you
    are losing time, money and energy.
  • Sort, file and purge regularly.
  • Work out of your car? Use a spiral notebook for ALL of your notes & never
    search for those scraps of paper again.

Messy Desk Tips

  • Make sure the only things ON your desk are the things you use all of the time. Everything else should have a different “home”.
  • Keep the things you use the most within fingertip reach.
  • Keep the things you use often within arms reach.
  • Keep the things you use rarely the furthest away.
  • Everything on or in your desk, and in your office, should be assigned a home based on its use.
  • Group like things with like things, including your tasks.
  • Stop trying to use a table or something else for a desk, it will NEVER work. Get a desk with at least one or two drawers for hanging files.

Reducing Junk Mail Tips

  • Visit the Direct Marketing Association website. There you can manage credit offers, catalogs, magazines and other mail offers. They make it super easy to manage what mail you do receive. You must re-register after five years. You may also register deceased loved ones with their Deceased Do Not Contact list.
  • Another great website that manages a large variety of solicitations you get is Catalog Choice. Their service works with you to stop catalogs, coupons, credit card offers, phone books, circulars and more.
  • Penny Savers You can call 800-422-4116 or mail request to Circulation, c/o Penny Saver, 2830 Orbiter St, Brea, CA 92821.
  • The Flyer You can call 813-626-SELL or mail request to Circulation, c/o Flyer, 201 Kelsey Ln, Tampa, FL 33619.
  • Val-Pak Savings Coupons They maintain regional lists, not a central one. Send your request to the address printed on the envelope you receive. If you receive the blue envelope, you can use their online form to remove your address.
  • Charity Donation Solicitations Charity Navigator shares a list of tips that will help you stop these pesky and unwanted solicitations. The minute you give to any charity, your contact information spreads to the rest of the charities so they can start hounding you too.

Time Management Tips

  • Schedule time next week to complete what you didn’t finish this week.
  • Schedule appointments with yourself to complete priority work.
  • How many magazine subscriptions do you have? Does the amount of time you have to read them match the amount you are receiving?
  • Utilize your prime time for priorites.
  • Avoid checking email first thing in the morning.
  • Group your tasks together such as calls to make, bills to pay, etc.
  • Avoid multitasking; it takes the brain 4 times longer to recognize and process each time you change gears to a new task. If you switch back and forth constantly you are wasting valuable time!