Grand Central Station

Grand Central Station is one of New York City’s most famous landmarks. It is also a very busy hub of activity, serving nearly 575,000 visitors a day. Kitchens are the Grand Central Station of most homes in America.

Multiple meals and snacks are prepared in home kitchens day-in and day-out. Because of this, it is critical that the kitchens are well functioning. Appliances, dishes, food, utentsils and the dreaded plasticware and lids all need well thought out designated homes.

The kitchen is also notoriously known as the most popular dumping ground for papers, mail, and every other item that first enters the household. With the rapid rate of paper generation in our world today, it is extremely easy to become overwhelmed with papers and mail in as little as one week. Because of this, it is important to have a paper processing system in place.

Carve out a mini-office in a niche somewhere in the kitchen. It is quite common to process the mail and papers in the kitchen and then transfer the paper to the home office. Unfortunately, because of our fast-paced society, we simply don’t have time to walk down the hallway, or up, or down the stairs to file away the papers in the home office. Plus, it simply is not convenient to do so. Instead we create piles on the kitchen table or counters and then we play the “moving stacks of paper” game. And heaven forbid, if someone is coming to visit, we do the “sweep the papers into a box and stash them in the closet” game. All along we convince ourselves we will get to that later!

If you want a system that is more likely to succeed because you are more likely to use it, set up a mail processing system that is simple to use and limited to no more than one or two steps.

Create a file center that includes file folders labelled with the various common categories of papers that come into your household. Store the file folders in alphabetical order and place them in an accessible location such as on your countertop or in a cabinet. You want it to be as simple as opening a cabinet door and dropping a paper into the appropriate file folder. Then as these files fill up, go through them and move only the long-term items to your home office, down the hallway, or up, or downstairs. In this manner, you only need to “file” papers away in your home office a couple times a year versus everyday!