Kathi on CW 6 News ~ Get Organized and Save Time By Mastering Your Papers and Mail

(Transcript)

Mark: Alright, while Ken’s getting our finances organized let’s get over to Lynda and see if she can get the rest of our area under control.

Lynda: Alright, I’m going to do my best, Mark. I know I need it at home. Do you have a lot of muck in your life? You can add space to your life, really it is possible. This morning we’re going to show you how to get organized and save time. Joining us to help us is Kathi Burns, known as the Master of Muck and the founder of Add Space to Your Life. Well thanks so much for being with us.

Kathi: Thank you.

Lynda: Well we have props here. We’re going to show you! Now you show people how to organize their life in many ways from image to the fridge to the garage. But this morning, we’re going to focus on mail and email and how it piles up.

Kathi: Mail.

Lynda: I think mine is about this high, it’s just junk mail. I think that I’m afraid to throw away because there might be something valuable in there.

Kathi: Typical. That’s very, very normal. And mail is the biggest muck of all in my opinion because it comes in every day and deluges us and deluges us every day and it gets into piles unless you have this strategy.

Lynda: Okay, so let’s talk about the strategy because it is hard to clean up the desk and time consuming.

Kathi: Very. So you don’t want to get into that position so the number one rule, don’t pick up your mail unless you have two hands. Two hands is critical because what I want to do is I want to sort the mail as I’m getting it from the mailbox.

Lynda: Right. And most of it you can throw away.

Kathi: Absolutely. In fact 60% is usually a bunch of junk.

Lynda: Okay, now so anyway, the number one dilemma is old statements for taxes and things like that you’re talking about?

Kathi: Yeah, but you know are you supposed to throw away your social security statement that you got if you already have one? I mean, do you have to keep all of them? Tax receipts, what is the government going to want if you’re audited, that type of thing.

Lynda: I think people are really worried that if you get some kind of offer from a company for a new credit card, that your information is going to be somewhere on there and some one else can take it. But you were explaining is, it’s really easy to get the information from all sorts of places.

Kathi: Everyone has their own degree of security. In my opinion, if it’s just my name and address, I’m not going to worry about shredding it, I’m going to recycle it because I can find out anybody’s name and address and anybody could swipe that. But if it has your bank account number, your social security number, then of course you’re going to want to do something with it.

Lynda: I think this title, the Five Finger Mail Sort. Can you explain that?

Kathi: Okay, what I like to do is I like to have two hands again, one hand has my mail and as I’m going to find it, I’m going to sort junk, oh here’s a bill, here’s a bill…

Lynda: So you make it like a file folder kind of.

Kathi: Absolutely, right in your fingers.

Lynda: Alright, very good. So in two hands, two minutes?

Kathi: Yes, it takes about two minutes. Like you don’t want to do the mail when you have your dog or a kid because you want to have the time to actually devote to sorting it, separating it, so whenever you’re walking into the house, you know where it goes.

Lynda: And don’t even bring the junk up to the desk.

Kathi: Absolutely not, in fact have a trash can or a recycle bin right outside your door, in the garage if you park in the garage or if you walk in through your front door for the mail right at the front door you can tuck it behind something. That way you can just trash in the trash.

Lynda: Very good, now what are action papers? Talk about those.

Kathi: Action papers are papers that you have to deal with, like here’s an invitation. So I’m going to put the invitation right into my Upcoming Events file. I’m going to put my bills to pay right in my bills to pay file. You see everything is vertical…

Lynda: And you’ve titled everything ahead of time.

Kathi: Yep, absolutely. So that’s your action papers, papers that you actually have to deal with.

Lynda: Okay, so this is a really good spot on the desk to have so you can see how to organize that and then go through once a week would you say?

Kathi: Once a week, for business people I recommend that they hit one action folder a day and that way within eight days they’ve covered everything that’s going on in their business.

Lynda: Okay, and then talk about using this nifty tool here, the shredder. A lot of people worry about again, that information going out to wrong people.

Kathi: Right, like here’s an offer that I brought that I probably don’t want someone to know and I have a credit card in there and I’m just going to shred it.

Lynda: Don’t make the mistake that I do because sometimes I’ll try to jam a bunch of them in there and then it gets stuck. So one at a time.

Kathi: Exactly and you can get pretty shredders now. They’re not all ugly.

Lynda: Yeah, I know. Mine’s pretty ugly at home. Okay, not talking about email junk because this is also a big one. You know you have your junk file but gosh, I have thousands on there that you just don’t seem to get a chance to go through.

Kathi: Okay, well the number one thing with emails I think is people can be sucked into it and they’ll sit in the email inbox forever. So one of my biggest rules is check it at normal times, don’t check it first thing in the morning especially if you are a business.

Lynda: Mark and I are guilty of that, we will come in and check emails and then you get caught up in trying to answer them because you don’t want to forget. So yes, you’re saying when you have time.

Kathi: Or set a time and typically right before you do lunch or right before you leave for the day, that way it’s a designated time right there and you know, you’re not sucked into it so to speak, and all of a sudden it’s oh, it’s time to go on air because you know, you forgot.

Lynda: And then the automatic signature line is good, that’s a really good one too. So okay, you have the booklet “Add Space to Your Life,” how do we get this, what is it?

Kathi: Okay, it’s 33 Ways to Master Your Muck and it’s a little booklet that I’m offering for free for all the viewers and all they have to do is go to [email protected], send an email…

Lynda: And we’ll have that linked to our website in case you can’t write that down right now.

Kathi: Absolutely, it’s [email protected], add, no pun intended and you’ll automatically get that free booklet as well as other tips from that.

Lynda: And this Saturday from 10:00-11:00, a free seminar, “Master Your Muck” at the Encinitas Library. So again both of those information will be linked to our webite at San Diego 6.

Kathi: Thank you.

Lynda: Nice to meet you.

Kathi: Nice to meet you as well.

Lynda: I’m going to go home and get organized today.

Kathi: Thanks, Lynda.

Lynda: Maybe…Coming up we’ll take a look at the new memorial remembering the Pentagon victims of the September 11th attacks. Then on San Diego 6 in the morning….