Cutting Down on Paper Clutter

January is National Get Organized Month, and there couldn’t be a better time to get your apartment off to a great new start. One of the first steps in getting your apartment organized is removing clutter from the space for a cleaner and more inviting home. Paper is one of the easiest things to accumulate, yet one of the least-often addressed sources of clutter in the home. This January, you can take control of your San Jose apartment by cutting down on paper clutter in a few simple steps.

Designate a Paper “Place”

It’s easy to let papers settle all over your apartment. You may leave the mail near the door, while you may sit and read the newspaper at the kitchen table. Records and paid bills can pile up in your bedroom, while instruction manuals get shoved into the nearest convenient drawer. The first step in cutting down on your apartment’s paper clutter is to determine a single location where your papers will be stored. This means picking the room where you want to store your papers, as well as the means with which you will contain them. You may want to keep all papers in a filing cabinet or box, or you may want to designate a desk or kitchen drawer for this task. Whatever your choice, make sure it is large enough to accommodate the papers you have today, as well as any you may accumulate in the future.

Deal with Paper Immediately

Paper most often accumulates when you don’t deal with it immediately. Rather than setting aside bills and other important documents to be handled later, consider dealing with them as soon as you receive them to keep your “to do” pile from getting too large. If you don’t always have time to look at papers right away, keep a small box for “to dos” and address it as soon as it starts to fill up. When you handle incoming papers immediately, you’re much less likely to forget or lose something important, simplifying your life in other ways as well.

Go Paperless

One of the easiest ways to cut down on paper clutter in your apartment is to eliminate it at the source. If you’ve been thinking about going paperless, there’s no time like the present to switch your bank statements, bills, and newsletter subscriptions to paperless. Scanning and storing your past bills and information digitally will cut down on the papers you’ve already accumulated. Finally, keep in mind that many of the papers you’ve been saving may be unnecessary—if your bank provides past statements online, for instance, you don’t need to keep the hard copies. Tax records and bills paid need only be kept for a few years, so find out how far back your records need to date and eliminate those that are ancient history. Make sure you shred any documents containing personal or financial information before disposing of them for your safety and security.

Whether you rent a studio or a two-bedroom apartment in San Jose at Carmel The Village, cutting down on clutter is a great way to kick off the new year. You can explore our apartment community and local neighborhood when you visit us on the web for additional information about luxury apartment life near Mountain View.