Hey there fellow “Paper Piler”,

Imagine it’s Friday and you’re thinking about making dinner after a long day of getting it all done. (Go you!)

In your hands are the bills you pulled out of the mailbox on the way into your home. Undaunted, you take a quick glance at each piece and know instantly  where  each should go.

One piece – that page of coupons from a dentist you’ve never heard of – goes in the trash.

Another two, bills, go in a designated folder on the wall. A third, something you need to look at later, goes in another folder.

You move on to the next to do’s as if you’ve done it your whole life. You’re on autopilot - no real decisions required.

Imagine that later that evening, your spouse comes in and asks you about that one paper. You know, the one needed by next week?

You smile and nod. You know exactly which paper and exactly where it is.

And unlike before, where there were piles upon piles in your home office… on the floor… stuffed into drawers… and spilling out of folders marked “Miscellaneous” … you have one place you go. You find the specific folder and, as if by magic, pull out the exact paper requested.

No stains, tears, or crayon doodles…. Just what you are looking for, when you are looking for it, in the state you need it in.

Imagine even later, a year from now, when you have to prepare your taxes. Where before you had to become an Indiana Jones-style explorer to find all the receipts you hope are still in your house somewhere…

Or desperately go through stack after stack multiple times to find that W2 or 1099 or whatever other tax form you desperately need to get taxes done on time…

... only to repeat the process a year later…

This time, it’s different. You pull out a neat file or two of items. Everything is there: your important tax forms, your receipts, and your statements are in one place. And what isn’t there is in electronic formats you can easily find. Your taxes are completed almost without stress and without worry in a mere afternoon. On time and with nothing forgotten.

And imagine a decade from now, when you become a grandparent. Imagine the emotional rush you’ll feel when you hand your child – now a parent – a box of their best artwork, pictures, and keepsakes. Nothing is ruined or lost. It’s all there, waiting for them to reminisce and pass down to their own children.

Amazing, right?

I used to believe that this version of myself and my home was impossible. Unattainable. Unrealistic.

I had four boys, after all, not to mention a home business and all the other responsibilities and to-do’s every modern working mom faces today.

I believed having a clutter free home … free of the piles of paperwork hidden in boxes and stuffed into drawers … was just not in the cards for me. My business alone generated mountains of paperwork!

My readers said things like…  

“It is massive, paper everywhere because I either didn't have a system or the system I had was too cumbersome to remember.”

“We have a lot of debt, so medical and collections bills/envelopes everywhere for most of the month, then hubby breaks down and takes a WHOLE DAY to tackle/sort/file it. Love my hubby :) We USUALLY toss junk mail right away. Oh, then there is my obsession with printing off/bringing home recipes I just HAVE to try. Most of those stay scattered for months until, again, hubby can't take it and I have to shove them in a cupboard.”

“I have piles that keep moving...I take it from one place, sort it into smaller piles and so on. These piles grow since I don't have the time to go through it.”

“Small home office looks like a huge tornado came thru leaving nothing but paper debris in the aftermath!”

“Stacks of papers, kinda sorted, but either can't decide whether or not we need to keep them, or where/how to store/file them!”

Ouch!

Not to mention how much of a fire hazard all this loose paper really is.

And if any of this sounds like you, I want you to know that it is not your fault.

Schools don’t teach you how to organize the mountain of paperwork. (Although after a century of junk mail, you’d think high schools would teach Paperwork 101 to every single teenager!)

Your family doesn’t help either. When was the last time you implemented a system only to have family members continue the piling habit… throwing their hands up in the air saying they “don’t know what to put where”?

I knew there was a better way. I knew this because I had found it myself after months of trial and error in my own home.

Once I found the solution, paperwork was never a problem for me again.

What was I doing that others weren’t?

The answer, I found, is the power of the Paperwork Pyramid .

The Paperwork Pyramid is the idea that you have to have three key components in order to finally conquer those paper piles for good.

First, you have to have the right Structure. Many natural-born organizers love systems. And so their ideal transformation involves hundreds of steps, systems within systems, and enough checklists to make you feel like you’re living through an FDA inquisition. That doesn't work.

What I discovered is that those who mastered their paper weren’t “born with it”. Instead, they found a structure which worked for them. It’s unreasonable to expect that your home will be Instagram-perfect every day. What is reasonable is that you can have a simple, easy-to-maintain system you’ll feel good keeping around.

Second, you have to have Realistic Habits. It’s unreasonable to expect that you’ll be able to get your whole family on to a new plan from day one. But with the right step-by-step plan, you can slowly change how everyone in your home views paperwork so that you get complete buy-in. (I’m looking at you, spouse-who-shall-not-be-named!)

And you don’t want to attempt a system that requires 27 different steps from you in order to work through your paper each week. It has to be something that’s simple and easy to do and that you can work into your regular routine.

And finally, it must be Convenient. No one has time to spend hours each day to think about organizing the family paperwork. And in order for this to work for you, the program must be simple and quick to implement... whether you’re in a tiny apartment or a rambling home.

Some people try to hire a consultant to help them. But boy, they are expensive. A quick glance online reveals just how expensive just a few hours of their help can be…

Yikes.

And the online resources were no better.

You’ll see advice like, “Just go one box at a time!” Meanwhile you’re over there thinking, “Do you even know how many boxes of papers I have?!”

Even worse, there are three strategies that almost never work, yet people recommend… and try… anyway:

1. “Shop” your way to organization.

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A lot of people think that the key to being organized with paperwork (and lots of other things) is in the supplies.

They go out and buy folders, labels, filing boxes or cabinets, and every office supply you can think of.

And then it all sits there.

Lesson learned: Don’t go shopping until you’ve decluttered, you know exactly what you need AND you have a plan for using it.

2. Implement a complicated organizational system.

It’s easy to get excited about “going paperless” or having file folders for every conceivable category.

But complicated or inconvenient systems are likely to be abandoned quickly.

Lesson learned: If paper clutter is a problem, simplicity needs to be a key part of the solution.

3. Do it all at once.

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People often get swept up in the excitement of making a big change.

They drag out all their papers (making a big mess even bigger!) and try to tackle it all at once.

But eventually energy fades and the mess is still be there.

Lesson learned: Pace yourself. It’s great to have momentum but it’s also critical to know how much you can do in a session and stop before you get burned out and feel like quitting for good.

…Which is why I knew that I had to provide a solution which immediately reduced the overwhelm and made creating your unique system fast and frustration-free.

My "Find Your Kitchen Table Guarantee"

I built this course to help you declutter and organize your piles of papers in a way that's as stress-free and convenient as possible. Yet in the unlikely event you follow the course and still can't find your kitchen table underneath all the papers after 45 days, I insist that you contact me for a full, 100% refund. No questions asked! I can't be any fairer than that.

- Sarah Mueller