The Great Paper Purge: The In-Basket

{This post is part of the Great Paper Challenge: From Piles to *almost* Paperless series.}

Before tackling the piles stacked around you, we need to prevent the piles from getting any higher. If your like the typical family, you still receive mail daily and get printed receipts for almost everything you purchase. That means there needs to be place to put any and all new paper that comes into the home.

A Temporary Home for New Paper

New bills, receipts, and other documents come into your home daily but that doesn’t mean you’re always in the position to deal with and file it all immediately. There needs to be a temporary home to keep all of it corralled until you have time to process it. That’s where the in-basket comes into play.

A physical in-basket works best for several reasons:

1. It’s a visual reminder to all family members that they should empty their bags and put paperwork in its temporary home.
2. Paper isn’t just stacked in a messy pile that tends to get ignored.
3. Paperwork can only be stacked so high until it starts to overflow, so there’s a good chance you’ll deal with the paperwork before it topples over.

Where should the in-basket go?

The most obvious place for an in-basket is on a desk or close to the location of your household files. However, that may be in a back room, or an office that you don’t necessarily want give the entire family free reign. If that’s the case, having two in-baskets could be a viable options for you.

The main in-basket should be placed where it will be processed, trashed, and/or filed.

The common area in-basket can pretty much go anyplace that works for your family; perhaps on a table by the entry door or even on the kitchen counter. It just needs to be convenient and easy for the entire family to participate.

Keep in mind that you don’t want to get in the habit of having two full in-baskets baskets, so there needs to be someone who’s responsible for transferring the contents from the common area in-basket to the main in-basket on a daily basis. Why daily? Because, eventually, we want to get in the habit of emptying the in-basket every single day. That may seem impossible right now, but once we get our files in order and our paperwork under control, it just may become second nature and something you look forward to doing!

Action Items for Today

1. Determine where your in-basket(s) should be located.
2. Find a basket or two to use.
3. Determine who will be responsible for transferring contents from the common area in-basket to the main in-basket.
4. Begin placing mail and other paper documents and receipts from purses/bags into the in-basket on a daily basis and encourage your entire family to do the same.

Let’s hear from you…

Do you currently have an in-basket that you use?

Click here to read more about the Great Paper Challenge: From Piles to *almost* Paperless!