Lexington, KY - Quick - where's the business card you got at that luncheon last week? The Post-it note you scribbled on yesterday, The invoice you know is due tomorrow? We all say we need to be more organized, so here are some tips from Sarah Hawkins, owner of DeClutter with Sarah, http://www.declutterwithsarah.com, and a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO).
File, don't pile
"If it takes less than a minute, do it," said Hawkins. "File it quickly. Don't set it down, or else going through weeks of mail will take a couple of hours of work when it could have just taken a minute." Filing, like brushing your teeth, becomes a habit.
Simplicity works
Use file folders with tabs aligned the same - left, center or right - instead of staggered tabs. If you prefer them all lined on the left and you have a stack of staggered files, take the right-tabbed files and turn them around so they become left tabs. "It takes three times as long to locate a file if they're staggered," said Hawkins.
Boring is good
There are plenty of opportunities in business and in life for excitement and variety, but being organized isn't one of them. When everything has a place and everything is in its place, think of it as a way of being grounded, a type of routine that can keep you centered - not to mention on time for client meetings and able to call up necessary information.
Maintenance is key
Keep a shredder where you open the mail, or open the mail near the shredder. "Make a yearly appointment with yourself to go through your files and purge what is no longer necessary," said Hawkins. "It is better than taking days or weeks to clean out 15 years' worth of stuff."
Ask questions
What would happen if you lost this document? Get in the habit of asking it every time you handle a piece of paper; the answer will tell you where to file it. If it's easily replaced because you have an electronic version, maybe the shredder is the best action to take. If the document is necessary for legal reasons, perhaps a firebox or safe deposit box is the answer.
Lindy Karns, a CPA with Dulworth, Breeding, Karns & Pleasants, www.dbkcpa.com, said the general statute of limitations for tax records is three years, but can be as long as six years in certain circumstances. "Generally, we recommend keeping tax returns for seven years beyond the filing date," she said. "Records that relate to the purchase of an asset should be kept until that asset is sold - for example, your residence, car you use for business, stocks, etc. Once sold, you should keep it with your tax records for that year."
The best system is whatever works for you. Karns said plenty of people don't keep records and are not in very good shape if they get audited. "If you can't do computerized records, use a shoebox," she said.
Certain documents should be kept permanently, including birth certificates, marriage and death certificates, insurance policies and mortgages. But utility bills from the '80s? Probably not. "Everybody keeps way more bills than they need to," said Hawkins.
Being clean and being organized are two different things; it's possible to be one and not the other. Also, being organized and saving space are not synonymous terms. "A lot of people want to pretend that space saving means being organized, but it doesn't," said Hawkins. "Dividing all those files will take space. It will be easier to find them, and you will be organized, but it will take space."
Electronic filing is similar to filing physical paper. Use files within folders and purge periodically. Redundancy is necessary with computers, so be diligent in backing up your electronic files. If you have some of your documents on a laptop and others on a flash drive and still more on a desktop, replace this scattered behavior with a daily system of consistency.
When Hawkins set up her own business in 2007, a year before graduating from the University of Kentucky with a degree in merchandising, she practiced what she would be preaching to clients by setting up a color-coded filing system. "I like to hold paper," she said. "My client files are pieces of paper. I type them up and print them out. I don't like to stare at a computer very long anyway."
She has clients in company offices, home offices and personal homes and has discovered she has an affinity for packrats and hoarders. She's even thinking of going back to school for a degree in psychology to specialize in working with compulsive hoarding. 
 
Kathie Stamps posts grammar tips at www.facebook.stampscommunications.com.