7 Ways to Manage Papers Clutter-Free

We all have paper clutter. It's one of the most challenging areas to manage because it comes from all different areas. Some you need to keep long-term, some you need to keep short-term, others you need to keep temporarily, and ones you want to keep. This post will talk about managing papers clutter-free.

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Go electronic with all your essential papers and scan them!
Go paperless with your bills.
Keep track of your login information.
Scan receipts with your phone.
Go paperless with your articles and research.
Get rid of your printer.
Scan your paper recipes.
Have a large shredder near the recycling bin

Go electronic with all your essential papers and scan them!

The first way to manage clutter-free papers is to make all receipts and statements digital. Making sure all your documents are digitalized will take some time, but it will minimize the clutter in your home office. The papers I am talking about are tax returns, bank statements, checks, etc. Many tax applications now generate PDFs of these files, so you don't need to scan them.

However, if you want to scan statements over a year and a half old ones, you may need to invest in a scanner (affiliate). There are many scanners out there. Find one that works for you and work through your piles. Below are some scanners for documents that you can scan several pages at once. I found these on Amazon (affiliate) (affiliate).

Scanner - Epson Workforce ES-580W Wireless Color Duplex Desktop Document Scanner for PC and Mac

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Go paperless with your bills.

Contact the companies via their website. You need to pay and set up bills to be paid electronically. If you are afraid that you may forget an autopayment, in the notifications sections, you should be able to select them to remind you when the autopay will be going out. Usually, the options are either text or email.

If your bank is national, you will likely find almost all your companies in the bill pay area.

You can also set up payment with reward credit cards for some bills. This will give you rewards, which you can use for travel, gift cards, and other things.

Whatever system you use, be sure to stay consistent. Paying bills using various methods can get pretty complicated.

Now, log into the different companies' websites and change your bills to electronic filing.

A way to do this is to keep a list of all the companies in a spreadsheet like Microsoft Excel or Word. In each row, write the login information(username and password) and account number. Have a column "changed to electronic mail" check box to remind you that you want to move to digital. Also, add the email address that you used for the online account. This can change over time, so you want to note it.

Company Name	Username	Password	Account Number	Changed to Digital	Email Address Used

Or, you can purchase a login app, like LastPass, that will allow you to securely add your usernames and passwords and securely add secure documents to it.

Scan receipts with your phone.

When you get new receipts, scan them immediately by taking a picture with your phone. There are many apps out there. In the past, I used Tiny Scanner on my iPhone. I can upload the scanned PDF image to Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, Box, and OneDrive accounts. It's excellent for papers that are not private.

Go paperless with your articles and research.

Use an electronic notebook like Microsoft OneNote or Evernote. I wrote a post about Microsoft OneNote on my Admin Blog. You can create notebooks for your different research topics and share them with others. In Microsoft OneNote, you can also add a password to the notebook. I am not sure if Evernote can do that. If you know, please leave a comment below.

Microsoft OneNote Notebooks Tips | Sabrina's Admin Services #digital #notebook

Get rid of your printer.

If you like to print out papers from your computer (affiliate), minimize this by eliminating at least one printer (affiliate). I know this may be hard, but you can do it. It will force you to find other ways to save stuff. And it may help you minimize what you save.

Scan your paper recipes.

If you are like me and love magazine recipes, this one is for you. I wrote a post about how I went digital with my recipes. Here's the link.

Going Digital with Recipes - The Easy Way - Sabrina's Organizing

Have a large shredder near the recycling bin

This clutter-free tip for managing paper will help you with mail that comes into the house. Place your shredder (affiliate) near your recycling bin (affiliate). This will remind you that you need to shred the papers every day. When you purchase a shredder (affiliate), spend extra for a large capacity shredder (affiliate). That way, you can shred entire envelopes of mail at once without having to separate it. Below are some shredders I found on Amazon (affiliate) (affiliate).