I’ve written briefly about it before, but I think it’s time to go into detail on how I lead a 95% paperless life.

1. Ask for everything to be changed into an e-bill

Stop the problem at the source.

Every time a statement floats into your mailbox, call or email them to request an e-bill instead.

By doing this, I’ve cut down on 90% of my recurring paper bills (some still come in like bank statements because they won’t or can’t do e-bills by law).

2. Save a PDF format of the bill

If you get an e-bill that is NOT in an Adobe PDF format, you can put it into Microsoft Word, and use the free program CutePDF to convert it into a PDF.

I suggest PDF formats, so you don’t accidentally delete an important part on a modifiable document.

3. Sort your papers

This is a nasty task if you haven’t been organized with neatly labeled folders and files.

Some general categories to start with:

• Government
• Banking/Investing
• University
• Insurance (e.g. Home, Car)
• Bills (e.g. Utilities, Telephone, Cable)
• Receipts/Warranties
• Taxes

4. Separate the items that NEED to stay in hard copy form

Taxes

Certificates (Birth, Marriage, Divorce, even Death of loved ones)

Wills and Testaments

Use your judgement.

5. Buy/Appropriate the following gadgets:

• Scanner (a $50 one will do)
• 2 x USB Key or Hard drive (I recommend Western Digital, Iomega or Seagate, and you won’t need more than 16 GB at the most)
• Shredder (Optional)

URGENT: I strongly recommend buying 2 or 3 USB keys or Hard drives, because once you scan the papers, the hard copy is lost forever once you shred it.

You do NOT want to lose that data.

Instead of buying a shredder, you can use these two cheapo methods I devised when my shredder conked out on me.

D-I-Y Papier-Mache

1. Rip all your statements up into shreds
2. Fill a kitchen sink with warm to slightly hot water (so your hands won’t freeze)
3. Throw the shreds in there
4. Let them soak until they’re really “done”
5. Ball them up into paper balls, papier-mache style, squeezing out ALL the excess water, really padding it down
6. Let them dry overnight on a rack
7. Throw them out, or use them to play catch in the yard.

This works beautifully because now the pieces of paper are all mixed up, and they cannot be peeled off, or read without falling apart in your hands.

Let it Burn

Just burn it. Grab a large metal can (or if you’re doing a wood fire grill outside), burn the papers.

No one can read ashes.

6. Set up the folders on your Hard drive

Use the categories from before:

• Government
• Banking/Investing
• Insurance (e.g. Home, Car)
• Bills (e.g. Utilities, Telephone, Cable)
• Receipts/Warranties
• Taxes

7. Come up with a file naming strategy

Often overlooked, naming files properly is a lost art in my opinion.

Do something along the lines of:

MajorName/Category_BriefDescription_Year-Month-Day

Name it backwards from Year to Day, so it sorts chronologically by year, and then by month, then by day.

E.g. #1 Driver’s License papers for renewal of plates October 19th 2009

Drivers-License-Bureau_Renewal-Of-Plates_2009-10-19

E.g. #2 Bank Statement for the month of November, 2009

Bank-Name_Statement_2009-11

8. Start scanning and shredding

The worst part of all, and the most time consuming.

I did about 20-30 lbs of paper (guessing here), in 3 months, scanning half an hour each night for 4 days.

It might take you longer, or it might be super quick. But it sure won’t be fun.

9. Have a drink

Smile at your super light load of papers, have a celebratory glass of wine (or huge piece of cake in my case) and keep up on it.

I’ll admit. I used to spend about $70 a month on beauty things. Trying out new eyeshadows, Bare Escentuals foundation, concealers, mascaras, hair products, shampoos, lotions.. you name it, I spent it.

Now, my beauty and toiletry spending has been very low. Like… $10 a month or less.

It’s because I stopped dying my hair, wearing a lot of makeup, and makeup everyday, the cost of keeping myself up has gone down.

I really just wear minimal makeup to work, heavy duty when I go to events (but then I find it makes me look a bit older so I tend to lay off the makeup or at least, use techniques that make me look more natural).

What I do spend a lot on is lotions for my skin like moisturizer, exfoliants, toners, cleansers, and acne fighting agents.

What I’ve mostly purchased from is Paula’s Choice, and her stuff is not cheap at around $20 a bottle. I think I spent $90 the last time I went on a splurge and bought enough stuff to last me for the next couple of months and longer since I use small dabbed amounts.

My budget used to be $50/month, but now it’s around $15 a month and if I don’t spend it, I throw it into savings and pull on that if I have to when I go on my little yearly purchase of toiletries and makeup when I run out of products.

Other than that, I find that my skin has responded better to not being covered in makeup, I don’t spend money on buying makeup removers to remove this makeup, and my hair has gotten a lot softer, shinier and more manageable.

(That of course, will NOT put me off wearing makeup or experimenting if only I had girl friends in the city to play with )

Not only that, it helps de-clutter your bathroom and give it more of a minimalist feel.

Which would you prefer, a bathroom filled with half used bottles?

Or a bathroom with just a couple of well-selected products?

It looks more visually appealing with less products, and you also don’t feel as guilty that you didn’t use up all of that lotion before buying another fragrance.

Some options of what to do when you have too much:

1. Toss anything that’s hardened or expired

2. Give them away. It could be a neat thing to try it, like a sample for your friends. It’s also a frugal way to try out your friends’ unused products as well

3. Use it all up and ban yourself from buying any more products until #1 or #2 has been completed

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I can’t recall if I’ve said this before.. but it bears repeating.

If you are keeping receipts for any reason — home business, personal taxes, corporate expensing … you should consider keeping the receipts sorted into SEPARATE envelopes instead of one big fat one.

So for example, for my home business, I sort my receipts into separate envelopes with names like:

• Office Supplies
• Travel Expenses (Flights, Rental Cars, Hotels) — Sorted by city & date
• Meals — Sorted by city & date

You get the idea… And on the front of envelope I quickly jot down the following, each time I put in a receipt:

• Date
• Where/What I spent it on (a shorthand note is okay)
• Amount spent

It saves me a HELL of a time at the end of the year when I do my taxes, to have everything properly sorted into these categories, along with a quick note of what I spent the money on, when & what the amount was.

Then, at tax time, I enter in the FINAL totals into an Excel file for simple access, once all the receipts stop jamming into the envelopes at the end of the year.

So for example, if I want to know how many meals I ate when I traveled to a city for business, I just pick up the two envelopes marked:

• Travel – NYC August – October 2008
• Meals – NYC August – October 2008

…and I tot up the numbers written on the envelope in an Excel file, sorted by category (Travel or Meals) and just sum up the numbers in Excel when I’m done, and enter it into my taxes as a single, well documented number.

WHY DO I NEED TO SORT MY TRAVEL & MEALS BY CITY AND DATE?

The reason why I have the travel & meals sorted by city & date is because you may travel to a city more than once, and you will not have an envelope big enough to write down EVERY SINGLE MEAL you’ve eaten in an entire year.

(Nope, not even the huge huge manila ones. I traveled a lot in 2008, and I had to keep a manila envelope PER trip made).

BUT I HATE PAPER!

So do I my friend. I even spent a lot of freaking time scanning in all those darn papers!!!

Alternatively, you can just track all of this into an Excel file.. but the problem with doing that is that you need to keep the physical receipts for tax time, or when your company asks you to pony up evidence that you ate that amount on a trip when they do their random audits.

So for this, I find the envelope system to be easier to handle than an Excel file because of the receipt filing involved (I tried.. trust me).

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LAL mentioned a while back that her mother is just such a packrat, that she cannot get rid of anything.

My mom is the exact same way and in her (and LAL’s mom’s situation), they grew up with nothing. My mom grew up in sheer poverty, stealing food that people put out as leftovers to let their animals eat (no really, she ate fish heads set out for cats), and trying just to stay alive, by shoving as many calories as possible into their system, such as eating pork fat melted over rice.

From that, stems a sense of insecurity.

My mom cannot let go of anything because she grew up with nothing, and having lots of stuff around her, makes her feel secure that she is now, finally comfortable. She doesn’t have to scrounge for food, and she can eat and buy what she wants (to a certain extent).

If I cleaned the house, and truly got rid of all of her stuff, she would feel an overwhelming sense of need to buy new things just to fill the space up to make it feel more comfortable. So sometimes, it’s better just to leave her with her old things, to save her money.

When I visit my parents, my mom always says that she wants to just.. CLEAN the damn place up and get it looking like Martha Stewart, Oprah or any of those design show’s homes.

I always kind of smile when she says that, because she just can’t let go of things. She tries, but she can’t. She can’t bear to throw anything out because she thinks they may be able to use it in the future.

Case in point: I went back to declutter. But I mean, really declutter. I had 7-8 bags of STUFF to toss (in hindsight, I should have been more eco-friendly in disposing of it, but a lot of it was broken or really torn beyond repair).

Anyway, my mom started sifting through everything, exclaiming that SHE could wear some of that stuff in there if she sewed it up (trust me, she would have looked like a bag lady if she did). She was just so surprised I was tossing all of that, and I had to firmly grab the garbage bag away from her and tell her that I was tossing it, and she better not be wearing anything in that bag when I come back because I WILL KNOW.

She put down the bag, but was still mumbling about wasting stuff, but she knows that I’m not tied to my clutter any longer, and am turning into a bit of a hippie minimalist (she thinks it’s great, but she cannot make the same change).

I then told her: if you don’t throw away, or give away anything, how do you expect to have less clutter in the house?

If you, are like my mom and want to become more of a minimalist like me, then you need to GET RID OF IT.

See, the solution is not to have more cupboard space, floor space, organizing baskets, whatever. It’s not about organizing items (well, it partly is), or rearranging what you’ve got.

The solution is to GET RID OF IT.

Give it away. Repurpose it. Donate it. Toss it. Whatever.

GET RID OF IT.

It seems so simple, but is the hardest thing to do, when you are sentimental and emotionally tied to your stuff.

HOW TO JUST “GET RID OF IT”
We all deal with three types of clutter: Memory, Lazy and Might-Need-It-One-Day Clutter.

The EASIEST to start with, is Lazy Clutter. Then Memory, then MNIOD Clutter.

For Lazy Clutter:

This includes documents you half opened and kept in their torn envelopes that you haven’t filed, junk mail, magazines, gifts or free t-shirts or frisbees you got for walking past a guy handing them out.

First, you have to say NO to all that free junk you get.

Second, try going through ONE box a weekend. Take out the items. Have you seen any of them in a year? If no, then you can live without it, and get rid of it.

Or third, get rid of one thing a day. Simple. Go around, and find one item, one piece of clothing, one pair of shoes, and get rid of it.

For Memory Clutter:

If you want to keep the memories of the item, take a picture.

You don’t need to keep a plastic dolphin sitting on a wave to remember the time you spent with Grandma at Seaworld. You can just take a picture of that dolphin and put it in your “Grandma’s Memories” folder on your computer, and go through them with a click when you feel nostalgic.

For Might-Need-It-One-Day Clutter:

You probably won’t ever need it.

This is the hardest to get rid of, but you have to ask yourself: “Should I really keep all of Mike’s old baby clothes? Am I going to have another baby? Is there someone else I can give the clothes to, who will be grateful to have it?“

If you really must keep it, put it in a bin, and LABEL IT, so that you don’t go out and buy yet ANOTHER hammer because you couldn’t find your last one.

This is where it will be handy to have your organization skills kick in, and will take a bit more effort.

Try the FAST rule

F: Fix a time
Do it once a weekend (on Saturday), and make sure everyone is involved. You can’t do it alone (the way my mom thinks she can).

A: Anything unused for a year
Like I said, if you haven’t touched, seen or used it in a year, there is a VERY, VERY high chance that you are never going to use it.

Things that are not in this category are things like scuba diving gear, that is very expensive to acquire but you cannot exactly go scuba diving every year.

To sort it out, ask yourself:

• Have I even used this?
• When did I last use it?
• Am I going to use it .. ever?
• Do I want to take up a whole closet or space in my house to keep it?

OH!

And don’t you DARE move things from one room to another.

This is akin to shuffling debt from one credit card to another credit card, to your line of credit. You will waste time, energy and money.

S: Someone’s junk
Er.. if it’s someone else’s, giving it back with a basket of storebought or baked muffins. If it’s your ex’s stuff, just toss it. If it’s your kids’ stuff, make them make the decision. You can’t keep all of Jimmy’s drawings from kindergarten if he is in college and doesn’t want them any longer. Keep one piece, if you must.

T: Trash/Donate
Toss it if you don’t want it but only as the last resort — reuse or recycle it first. Be excited that you are giving away so many things and getting it out of your home, to give it to others who are in need of it, more than you. Keep only what YOU love in your space.

Set a goal for yourself

Be it getting rid of one box per weekend or whatever, you have to set goals and deadlines. Finish one room or one box before opening the next, or else you’re going to have an even MESSIER house.

Cut out a picture of what you want each room to look like — from Oprah, Martha Stewart, Home and Garden. Look at that, as your goal, your dream room.

Recycle first, dump it last

Following the three Rs, start with Reusing it if you can (cut up old clothes to use as rags), then Recycle it by giving it away donating it or whatever, and then Reduce the clutter by tossing it as a LAST resort.

Be diligent

You can’t be super (or unrealistically) organized for the first month, much like with your finances, when you budget or track your expenses. Make it easy to stay clean and decluttered, and keep up on it, 10 minutes a day, or an hour a week.

As for organizing it?

Why don’t you try going through lazy and memory clutter first, then we’ll have a little chat, hmm?

If you’re impatient: FB Read: Shopaholic Life/Organization Posts.

P.S. This is my dream apartment

See more pictures here.

FB Reminder: I am away on vacation right now. This post has been scheduled ahead of time.
I won’t be moderating comments until end of August 2009. Thanks for your patience!

This is something I’ve done ever since I received a shiny, plastic card in my hot little paws.

I know, I could be earning the extra $0.02 in interest or something.. but I’d rather just pay it now, be done with it and forget about having to remember what to pay at the end of the month, and extricate from what I owe from what I can leave until the next statement.

This was especially trying when I was charging like mad to card while travelling on business.

For example, if I charged $23, $50, and $100 in three separate transactions, I’d just pay $173 in total.

Seems easy right?

Wrong.

By paying the $173, I couldn’t figure out if it was ONE payment or 3 separate payments grouped into one! Stress ensued about whether or not I paid it off, or if the amount was correct..arrrgh!!!

So I came up with this solution.

This makes it SUPER easy to track each transaction that I have paid off and then I just don’t worry about it any longer, if I owe it, if I remembered to paid it.. whatever.

WHY THIS WORKS THE BEST FOR ME

It is seriously easy once you get the system in place (of course, you will need a way to track your expenses to make sure you’re recording what you’ve charged on your card, so you can pay it off).

1. It helps me reconcile my credit card statement

I just look at my super handy budgeting spreadsheet, look at what has left to be paid, and I just sort the transactions, and sum the total, which should match exactly with the statement.

It has never failed me!

Once, I even caught a $0.01 discrepancy, and realized that I had accidentally paid the wrong amount on a transaction and was just a penny off.

So I corrected that by sending a penny in right away so that I wouldn’t get charged with interest or something stupid.

2. Transactions are no longer grouped

I don’t pay them in groups any longer. If the amounts are $23, $50 and $100, I pay each of them separately so that I know that each of those amounts are cleared.

That way, if I get ANOTHER charge my accident for that amount, I know it’s a mistake, or at the very least, I look into the situation to see if I missed a receipt somewhere that I didn’t record, or if it may have been a mistake.

You gotta know where your money is going.

3. I double-check everything before I pay it

This also gives me a chance to check to see if they charged me the right amount. I caught a mistake once by a vendor who charged me $100 instead of $10.

Ugh, that was a mess.

But now I don’t just blindly pay off my entire credit card amount, the way I used to.

And it’s easy to see what has been cleared and what hasn’t just by looking at the actual amounts instead of the store name or date.

4. I don’t over or under pay any longer

This is especially helpful. In the past, I used to just pay $500 or whatever the amount I thought I had spent, or what it said at the bottom.

But then the number at the bottom wasn’t real-time accurate, and I wasn’t keeping track of each transaction being cleared, so I’d overpay, or under pay.. or whatever.

It was a hassle, because then if I underpaid, I had to figure out by how much, and if I overpaid, I had to figure it out from the next amount I charged to deduct that amount out.

I hate leaving money that could be in savings, even $10 locked on a credit card, when they don’t earn interest at all and I can’t take that money out and spend it somewhere in cash or on another card.

5. I am being diligent in preventing credit card fraud

Sometimes fraudsters will charge $0.02 or $10, very small amounts to check if you are paying attention. If you call and ask WTF that store or transaction is, it is a sign that you’re paying attention to what you are seeing on your statements, and they’ll move on to the next victim.

Of course, if you just don’t even look at your statements and toss them in the nearest skip, I can’t help you there.