Professional Organizer Offers Paperwork Sorting Method

Kacy Paide, a professional organizer who has handled paper clutter for clients for over two decades, says the first step is to work on the documents closest at hand rather than the boxes stored in a garage or office closet. "The documents and action items that are on fire tend to be closest to us," she said.

Paide advises dividing those papers into two groups: active documents that require follow-up, such as a phone call or a bill payment, and inactive documents such as receipts, birth certificates and personal correspondence that need no immediate action. For active items, she writes a deadline in permanent marker on a sticky note and attaches it to the document. She recommends naming a specific date, such as "due by Nov. 15" or "start no later than 12/1," rather than general terms like "urgent," which she said lose meaning over time.

For storage, Paide places passports, marriage certificates and similar records in a brightly colored folder positioned at the front or back of a file box, describing it as a "bookend to your filing system" so the documents can be located without searching through other papers. She uses plain file folders labeled with sticky notes written in permanent marker, which allows the folders to be relabeled and reused if the sorting method changes. File boxes kept on bookshelves serve as a visible storage system, she said.

Not every document warrants storage. Paide suggests asking what circumstances would require producing a given document before deciding to keep it. The Federal Trade Commission advises destroying materials that contain sensitive information to guard against identity theft, including account numbers, birth dates, passwords and pins, signatures and Social Security numbers.

For personal papers such as old letters, divorce papers and greeting cards, Paide recommends working through them with a family member or friend and speaking openly about each item. She said people reach decisions about whether to keep or discard such documents "shockingly fast." She assigns 25 minutes at a time to the work for anyone who finds the task difficult to begin.

The story was edited by Clare Marie Schneider, with Beck Harlan as visual editor.