Type-A Mom has a new look! Check out the new site! We're also hiring writers!

Do you find you are buried under piles and piles of paper each week? There are so many sources of paper these days like advertising flyers, catalogs, school papers –they can all add up to a big pile quickly. With these tips you can dig a hole in your paper pile. Subscribe to Type-A Mom articles

(2013 bytes)

• Read your mail over a recycling bin, that way you can throw away unwanted flyers, mail and catalogs before they clutter up your house.

• Reuse your junk mail envelopes to write your weekly grocery list and put your coupons you are using that week into the envelope.

• Pick a spot in your house where the mail that needs to be read can be kept. It can be a basket in the living room or the desk area in your kitchen.

• Keep a closable plastic container filled with the following: accordion style folder (with at least 12 pockets), file folders, paper, pens, stamps, and address book. When you want to go through and pay your bills you can carry it with you.

• Use color coded file folders to create a filing system. You can use a different color for each of these different categories: kids’ school papers, bills and financial documents and important papers. File the papers immediately into these different folders.

• When you have time you can go through one folder at a time, but make sure you go through the whole folder and not just part of it.

• Buy your greeting cards in bulk-stamp and address them and put them in your accordion folder. On the first of the month, mail off the cards for that month.

• If you can’t find your refrigerator because of all the art work take the ones you like to a copy center and get them laminated. Then you can use them for place mats.

• To keep the stacks of newspapers, magazines and cardboard from getting messy, tie them up with your old panty hose. They will stretch enough to be able to go around the whole bundle.

• Do you have troubles keeping track of your PIN numbers? There is an easier way besides having piles of paper laying everywhere. Put them as a fake telephone number in your personal address book. For example Joe Millionaire 126-2315.

• Have a large envelope glued to the inside cover of your phone book. It can help contain your take-out menus.