http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogList.asp?sort=organizer&schedule=1 From credit card statements to Post-Its®, birthday party invitations to oil change coupons, expense reports to dental appointment cards, our modern lives and horizontal surfaces are overrun with paper. We're not sure what happened to that paperless office we were promised at the dawn of the computer revolution, but the more we go digital, the more paper we have. OnlineOrganizing.com's Paper Doll helps make sense of what papers to keep, where to keep them and for how long, and will offer some solutions and observations about winning the 21st century paper chase. These tips will even help you keep more of those little green pieces of paper everyone likes so much. Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:45:29 EST en-us http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2745 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2745 Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:30:00 EST Supreme Court justices and reality show contestants aren't the only folks subject to background checks, and government and corporate vetting committees aren't the only ones digging for dirt. Employers, dating services, landlords, wealthy parents of celebutantes--all have an interest in checking out somebody's background. EMPLOYERS In our increasingly litigious society, many employers feel they must perform background checks to protect themselves against negligent hiring ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2707 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2707 Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:30:00 EST Last week , as part of our ongoing series on the agencies collecting and distributing information about consumers, we talked about CLUE and A-PLUS reports, and how the information contained within them determines whether you can get (or keep) your insurance, and what kinds of rates you'll be charged as a home or vehicle owner. Of course, insurance companies aren't only interested in damage claims for your home and car. They also want to take your temperature, so to speak, as a ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2692 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2692 Tue, 3 Nov 2009 10:30:00 EST The final mystery is oneself. ~ Oscar Wilde Oscar Wilde may not have known it, but his statement is applicable to how much of a mystery our own financial "secrets" can be, even to ourselves. Sure, you may be skilled at sussing out that Colonel Mustard did it in the library with the candlestick. But what if Mrs. Peacock, the agent from your insurance company, Mustard Mutual, canceled your homeowner's policy with a pen stroke? Would you know why, or what it meant? As we've ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2684 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2684 Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:30:00 EST Last week , we revisited how to protect your paper trail of personal information from identity thieves, and also talked about all the different ways other institutions (besides your creditors) can sneak a peak at your credit history. But wait, there's more! (Lots more!) You already know that the three credit reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian and Trans-Union) keep track of all the activity on your credit cards, mortgages, loans and medical accounts. But they aren't the only ones ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2673 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2673 Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:30:00 EST Years ago, the best way to keep your personal information truly private was to hide the key to your Barbie® diary or leather journal in a safe place to protect against the prying eyes of your precocious little sister. In our adult years, we might assume that most of the information about us "out there" (photos, posts on social networking sites, blogs, etc.) is material we've put into the world ourselves. Beyond that, our biggest concerns tend to be the information purloined ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2660 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2660 Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:30:00 EST A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting. ~ Henry David Thoreau George Carlin famously asked "Have you ever noticed that anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac?" Carlin's own little theory of relativity has been on my mind this past week, not because of the disparate personalities on the road, but because of the ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2626 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2626 Tue, 6 Oct 2009 10:30:00 EST Last year, we celebrated the first anniversary of the Paper Doll blog with the traditional first anniversary gift of--no surprise--paper. This year, flummoxed by how to observe the blog's second anniversary and shoehorn in paper when the traditional gift is cotton , I was excited to learn that paper is the traditional second anniversary gift in the United Kingdom . So, please imagine any text in this week's post being spoken with an English (or Irish or Scottish or Welsh) ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2616 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2616 Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:30:00 EST Last week, Paper Doll took a week off from writing to recover from a minor medical procedure...let's just call it a paper cut . All is well, and I'm happy to be writing again, and the topic on my mind is hospital billing. A few months back, we talked about organizing your medical paperwork in order to be better prepared for emergencies and other health-related issues: Vital Signs: Organizing For A Medical Emergency, Part 1 Vital Signs: Gathering Information During/After A ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2591 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2591 Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:30:00 EST Volunteers don't get paid, not because they're worthless, but because they're priceless. ~Sherry Anderson Volunteering is on Paper Doll 's mind more than usual this week. Perhaps it's because the college football season is pressing forward in earnest, and I live in Tennessee, home of the Tennessee Volunteers . Certainly, some of this preoccupation is because I'm helping more and more of my clients carve out time in their busy schedules to volunteer (on their own, ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2573 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2573 Tue, 8 Sep 2009 10:30:00 EST Repeat business or behavior can be bribed. Loyalty has to be earned. ~ Janet Robinson, CEO, The New York Times Company Loyalty cards. It's really a misnomer, because most people have multiple cards to numerous competing grocery, office supply, book, electronics and home remodeling stores. The stores hope that by providing you with a card that offers a discount on your purchase or points towards an eventual gift certificate, you'll be more loyal to that store. Yeah, right. In ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2554 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2554 Tue, 1 Sep 2009 10:30:00 EST "Obscenity can be found in every book except the telephone directory." ~ George Bernard Shaw How many phone directories do you have in your home or office right now? Are any of them from prior years? (Decades?) Leaving aside their apt uses for leveling wobbly tables, serving as booster chairs and killing really large insects, how often do you actually use your paper telephone directories? It used to be so simple in ye olden days. We had one phone company (Ma Bell) which annually ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2533 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2533 Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:30:00 EST They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they'd make up their minds. ~Wilt Chamberlain Perfect (adjective): free from any flaw or defect having all the required or desirable elements, qualities or characteristics; as good as it is possible can be blemish-free The word "perfect" and the concept of that ideal sounds lovely, delightful and worthy. How then is it that perfectionism , or worse, the person who strives to achieve this ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2516 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2516 Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:30:00 EST If you've ever bought a car or house, you probably know all about your FICO score. If not, you might wonder what the big deal is. The bottom line is that the better your FICO score, the better interest rates you can get on loans. Let's say you want to take out a 30-year fixed mortgage of $250,000. Someone with the highest FICO score (760-850) could get an interest rate of 4.99%, for a monthly payment of $1341; skip down a few rungs on the FICO ladder to the 620-639 range, and the rate ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2487 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2487 Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:30:00 EST When was the last time you were asked to find the area under a curve? What were the main political, social and economic causes of the American Civil War? True or False: a mole is defined as the amount of substance of a system that contains as many "elemental entities" (atoms, molecules, etc.) as there are atoms in 12 g of carbon-12 (12C)? Paper Doll bets you really don't care. And yet, is it possible that although you've been out of college a while, you still have those old ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2479 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2479 Tue, 4 Aug 2009 10:30:00 EST * It is a truth universally acknowledged that a student in possession of a dorm (but no kitchen), an apartment-dweller exhausted by cubically-corporate drudgery or a home-owning suburban parent wearied by carpools, must be in want of a take-out menu. Take-out. Take-away. Delivery. Menus appear in our mailboxes, on our doorknobs, and in the case of city-dwellers and dorm-doyennes, under the doors. Recently, a blogger in Scotland complained about not knowing what to do with her "take ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2470 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2470 Tue, 28 Jul 2009 10:30:00 EST You Paper Doll readers are fantastic! In addition to some comments right here at the site, last week's post Top 10 Vital Documents--Do You Know Where Your VIPs Are? wins the award for attracting the most email of the past two years. It's thrilling when so many of you are as excited as I am about to share your thoughts about organizing paper. To recap, that post reviewed what I consider the Top 10 vital documents, or VIPs (Very Important Papers), that most people should (or may) ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2460 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2460 Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:30:00 EST As a Certified Professional Organizer, I find it's a common occurrence to be sorting through piles of papers and then find a real gem, a VIP or Very Important Paper. When this happens, the client invariably shrieks with delight ("Oh, I've been looking for that for months!") or dismay ("Oh, I was looking for that for months and ended up spending lots of money to replace it.") Today, we're going to review the Top 10 VIPs you should (or may) have: 1) Birth Certificate In ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2450 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2450 Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:30:00 EST For those of you who may not recall 10th grade Social Studies, Bastille Day commemorates the anniversary of the July 14, 1789 storming of the Paris Bastille, a fortress known for holding political prisoners captive. If the pertinent details of history class are crowded out of your memory by more pressing daily stress over the clutter in your home or office, you may even feel imprisoned by your paper. Perhaps you'd like to forge your own revolution against the tyranny of paper clutter ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2415 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2415 Tue, 7 Jul 2009 10:30:00 EST Sometimes, a model for efficiency can feel universal, like the Diaper Bag Model for daily mobile paper I discussed at the start of this series. Similarly, even those of us who don't cook do still eat, making the Culinary Model for mobile office success accessible to all. Other types of inspiration are more...personal. From Paper Mommy , I've learned the elements of a "perfect" bag. My mom has been on a quest for the ultimate purse since the Eisenhower administration. ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2390 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2390 Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:30:00 EST Over the past few weeks, we've been talking about mobile paper. Today, we're looking at the specific systems of materials and skills needed by all you road warriors in your mobile offices. And ironic as it might seem coming from someone who has blogged previously about a lack of kitchen-related skills, Paper Doll is a big believer in imitating the systems of a chef when developing an auto-office. I, Julie, may not be in the same realm as Julia (or even Dan Aykroyd's version ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2383 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2383 Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:30:00 EST Last week , we touched on the Diaper Bag Model of organizing mobile paper and explained why it's superior to carrying personal papers in any one of an ever-growing collection of canvas tote bags. Today, we're going to go a little further in discussing the essential elements of a personal portable paper system (say that three times fast!), and next week, we'll continue on to explore the issues facing road warriors in mobile offices. But first, let's recap the essentials ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2368 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2368 Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:30:00 EST Darling readers, do you remember the Mead Trapper Keeper® ? Those of us of a certain age might recall the organizational equivalent of the 9th grade Holy Grail, a system whereby all of one's important papers could get from home to locker to class and back again without getting lost, soiled or mishandled. For those of you unfamiliar with the organizational magnificence of the Trapper Keeper®, let it suffice to say that it was no mere three-ring binder. Beneath that Velcro ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2359 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2359 Tue, 9 Jun 2009 10:30:00 EST In my field, we often find that disorganization is the symptom of a bigger issue. For example, when parents bemoan that our hard work is for naught because the kids will fuss and fume and refuse to follow any organizing rules (even those created with their own input), it ceases to be an organizing issue. It's a parenting issue. When a client is pleased with the financial files we've organized and the debt-reduction plan we've designed, but reports back that the spouse is ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2346 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2346 Tue, 2 Jun 2009 10:30:00 EST When you think "car paperwork", what comes to mind? Your purchase agreement? Title and registration? Insurance? All the maps and directions to where you've been? (Post-It® Jaguar via Scott Ableman ) What about the receipts for all the maintenance and repair you've had done to your car? Are they squished in your glove compartment? Do you lovingly smooth out the wrinkles and file them away in the Household section of your Family File system ? Last month's issue ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2329 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2329 Tue, 26 May 2009 10:30:00 EST Last week , I reviewed three of the biggies of the NAPO conference expo: Pixily, the most popular; ScanDigital, beloved by non-scrapbooking, snap-shot-taking professional organizers, and Xambox, which left enough of us flummoxed that we had to go back a second time to make sure we understood it. This week, we have our final roundup of the digital delights of the NAPO conference expo. Neat was a favorite at past NAPO conferences where they'd displayed their streamlined NeatReceipts ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2324 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2324 Tue, 19 May 2009 10:30:00 EST Last week, we reviewed the paper-based solutions for organizing information and paper displayed at this year's NAPO annual conference and expo. Today, we start covering the gems of the digital side of the expo--the software, hardware and services that help us live, if not paperless , at least with a bit less paper . Pixily was the adorably-named star of the expo. Pixily bills itself as an affordable, secure, easy document management service to help individuals and small businesses get ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2316 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2316 Tue, 12 May 2009 10:30:00 EST Last week, I shared some of the wonders of the vendor expo at the annual conference of the National Association of Professional Organizers . You may wonder how exciting an organizing expo might be. Well, imagine yourself in a candy store, a cozy bookshop, a George Clooney emporium...picture being surrounded by the newest and niftiest of whatever floats your boat. Now imagine Paper Doll and her organizing cohorts and you can imagine the excitement that abounded in the NAPO Expo, with ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2306 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2306 Tue, 5 May 2009 10:30:00 EST For those of you who follow multiple professional organizers, either in the blogosphere or in social networking (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), you're probably aware that most of us snuck off to Orlando last week to learn about the latest and greatest in the organizing industry at the annual conference of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO). While one pal got a kick out of teasing that NAPO was a conference focused on nap ping , he wasn't entirely wrong. After ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2296 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2296 Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:30:00 EST You can peg the children of Sesame Street and The Electric Company by their responses when you say something like "phenomena" ( MahnahMahna...do doot de doo doo ) or "You got soup?" (That's Rita Moreno and Morgan Freeman's Menu Song!) Similarly, people of a certain age, like Paper Doll , get a particular thought when they hear the Z and M sound, such as when the wide-eyed, vaguely European boy in the Mazda commercials intones "Zoom Zoom". In fact, we get an uncontrollable urge ... http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2290 http://www.onlineorganizing.com/BlogEntry.asp?id=2290 Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:30:00 EST The third week in April is designated "Organize Your Files" Week . Professional organizers like Paper Doll are all beside themselves with joy and celebratory glee for this paperific observance. What about you, are you all aflutter over this holiday week? No? But organizing your files with lift your spirit. And there's ice cream at the end of this post! I understand how overwhelming it is to face a clock ticking to zero minutes, zero seconds, and the need to find an essential ...