Time and Paper Challanges

If time and paper are your organizational challenges, then start with these basic three tings: goals, a calendar, and a good “active” paper filing system.

As you set your goals, make sure they take priority when scheduling activities on your calendar. The calendar will keep you on track with your commitments, birthdays, events, etc. Make sure you keep it in a place that is accessible by the whole family. You want to get everyone in the habit of using it. Some great products to help you keep your goals and activities organized are the BusyBodyBook and the Family Life Organizer and Planner.

I have used both of these products with clients and they have done wonders to keep them on track. The BusyBodyBook has five columns for five different people or activities. My client used the first column for her schedule, the second of her daughter, the third for work, the forth for meal planning and the fifth for things to do. She is in her second year of using it and now couldn’t live without it.

The Family Life Organizer and Planner also comes with a calendar, but since it is a binder it gives you more flexibility to keep important papers at hand and organized.

Now for those “active papers”, papers that you have to do something with sometime soon, I highly recommend a Tickler System. The best thing about a Tickler System is that you make a decision about when you are going to act and them you file the paper for that day and forget about it. No more waking up in the middle of night worried about a bill that is stuck in the middle of a pile of papers on your kitchen counter. What a huge stress reliever! Check it out the SwiftFile.

I have used a Tickler System for my household management for over 8 years (since the birth of my oldest son). It takes me less than 5 minutes to go through my daily mail and file it in my Tickler System. Then every night before I go to bed, I pull the file for the next day and see what I want and need to get accomplished. It allows me to plan for my next day in a relaxed way. And if there is something I don’t manage to get done (because we all know that sometimes “life happens”), I simply file in another daily folder so that I can tackle it another day.

Next time I will talk about the 3 D’s of Organizing! Till next week…