Simple Manifesto #26 – Create a simple paperwork system

This is part of our series on The Simple Living Manifesto. We invite you to join us on the journey.

The 26th idea in the manifesto is:

Create a simple mail & paperwork system. If you don’t have a system, this stuff will pile up. But a simple system will keep everything in order. Here’s how.

Piles of paperwork | Photo by Jonathan Blundell

Arghhh! Paperwork!

I sure wish the rest of the world could just go paperless. It’s so much greener and I can organize my electronic files so much easier….

But we all know we don’t live in a perfect world — yet.

I wrote about wanting a simple paperwork system for our mail on Monday (knowing this post was coming up and hoping one of you would have some great suggestions for me).

It’s been two days and I haven’t found a perfect solution yet, but I may have taken a step in the right direction.

Rather than carrying the mail into the house and tossing it on the bar like we typically do, I decided to try a slightly different approach. When I arrived home Monday, I sat all the mail on our dryer in the laundry room — it’s the first room we usually enter the house through but rarely seen by others.

Then I immediately started processing the mail.

With our garage and our paper recycling bin right next to me, I was able to process out the junk immediately and toss it in the recycling bin.

I took the important stuff (a new DVD documentary I had ordered from a friend) and left one or two envelopes that were addressed to my wife. I’m assuming she either trashed them or did something else with them because I haven’t seen them sense.

So I’m sure this method isn’t perfect yet — but it’s a step — and that’s a big part of living simply.

Quit sitting around pretending you’ll do things better in the future — and start doing them!

So… what ways can we perfect this system? How do you process your mail/paperwork?