I recently found myself DROWNING in paper.  Paper piled EVERYWHERE. Especially on the desk in family room I call my "Family Managers station".  I would sort all of the paper, put all of the papers that needed to be acted on or filed in a couple of folders, leave them on my desk and NEVER GET TO THEM!

Then I heard this great tip! One that I actually USED to do, and forgot about. You see, in general, I was holding on to each of those papers to remind me to DO something. If they weren't reminders of actions I needed to take, then they tended to be things I wanted to keep for reference. So I got myself a new file box from staples, and  bunch of folders and I started sorting. I tried very hard to sort all of the papers into ACTIONS I needed to take. Anything that wasn't an action I need to take, I filed as a reference item. I sorted everything into plain manila folders, and the put the manila folders into two hanging folders. The First hanging folder was for "Action" folders and the second was for "Reference" folders.  Here are the categories I came up with:

Action Categories:

• Bills to Pay Online
• Bills to Pay By Mail 
• Follow Up By Mail
• Tzedukah (Charity) to Give (Pledges I had made)
• Follow Up By Phone
• Show To/Discuss With Aron (My Husband)
• Upcoming Events to Plan/Schedule - For example, in there is the schedule for the Jewish Book Fair -- I have to decide, do I want to go to any of the lectures? If so, I have to book a babysitter and put it on my calendar, but I didn't have time to make all of those decisions, so I put it in that file.
• Upcoming Events/Projects for the Kids School -- I shall never lose those notes again!
• Follow Up By Email/Internet - Mostly ads I've ripped out that I want look up on the net.

 Now, when I have my "take care of family business day" (Usually on Monday when the kids are in school) I can just pull out each folder as I'm ready to take action on different items. No more sorting through the pile over and over again!

Here are my "Reference" folders:

• Mitzvah (Behavior) charts -
  
• Kids Medical Records (Hey, you never know when you'll need them!)
• $ Reference - Inculding my bill paying calendar -- My clear picture of when each of my bills come due.
  
• Things I want for the house - My "Wish list" of things I find in the newspaper inserts.
• Insurance Information

This list isn't so big because generally, I keep my reference papers  (like the kids school calendar, takeout menus & class lists) in my "household notebook" (more about that later) but the notebook is in need of a re-organizing as well, and I just wanted to focus on sorting through the papers on my desk and...that's what I found.  So when I reorganize my household notebook, I'll probably merge the "reference" files with the notebook -- but for now they'll stay here.

Is this helpful to anyone out there?

Any questions?