No matter what type of planner your family decides to
use, you will always have a certain amount of paperwork that needs to
be managed: mail, flyers, invitations, directions, concert tickets.
Having an easy-to-use method for handling all of this paper can save
your family many hours and much frustration.
A device that provides you
with a compartment for each day of the month will allow you to sort and
retrieve all the pieces of paper that you'll need again soon. These are
the items that you'll need in the short term, so you don't need to take
the time to put them in file folders where they might be forgotten—you
know, out-of-sight, out-of-mind. On the other hand, you know how easily
tickets to an event can get lost in a stack of papers and how frantic
you get if you're running a little late and have to start rummaging
around for them. You can put them where you'll find them in an instant
if you use a product such as the EZ Pocket Home-Date Organizer,
illustrated in Figure 2.2.
Literature sorters, such as the one shown in Figure 2,
are great if you're having trouble keeping one family member's mail and
papers separate from another's. Give each member an in-slot for the
day's mail and other information he needs to act on. Have an out-slot
for outgoing mail. Some members might want their own out-slot for things
such as signed permission slips that they need to take back to school.
You can get a jump on bill paying by making sure that all bills that
come in the mail are immediately put in a separately designated slot.
These sorters are very versatile, so you can customize them to fit
whatever circumstances are unique to your family.
