Decluttering Papers From the Get-Go

I’m trying an experiment today:

Never handle a piece of paper more than once.

stacks of paper

The advice is from time-management guru Alan Lakein and written by Kate White.   I found the tidbit in a document of thoughts and quotations I had collected in college and saved on my computer.   The document title was – quite college sophisticated as it was – simply “random tidbits”.  No wonder it went untouched!

I think Lakein’s idea of never handling a piece of paper over and over refers to the workplace (as I was studying business).  Nonetheless, here’s what I’ve got. Here’s what I’m trying with the little bits of this-could-be-interesting-one-day papers in my desk and all the German worksheets piling up in an overstuffed folder.  Here’s something I hope helps you:

As soon as you touch a piece of paper, make a decision about what to do with it – whether it’s file it, pass it on, work on it, or destroy it – and then do just that.

Do you have any tricks for keeping paper piles small to start with?  How do you combat paper clutter?

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Looking for a few more tips on getting paperwork under control?  Here’s an all-time favorite trick at our house (especially because it has such instant results), and here’s the German filing system we set up.

(Image from Flickr)