A simple home for letters and paperwork
Paper has a way of spreading. A letter on the kitchen table, a form in the hallway, a warranty somewhere in a drawer. The trick isn’t to file everything perfectly. It’s to give paper one place to land.
We use a single tray by the front door. Everything that comes in goes there, and once a week, usually on Sunday morning, we empty it. Each piece gets one of three answers: deal with it now, file it, or recycle it.
For filing, a small box with a handful of labelled folders is plenty: home, health, car, work and receipts. Anything you’d only need once a year goes in a folder at the back.
It takes about fifteen minutes a week, and you always know where that one important letter is.