Clutter Coaching: The “Touch it Once” Rule

There’s lots of types of clutter and lots of ways it can pile up.  The Touch It Once strategy works well for keeping down mail clutter— either paper mail or e-mail. 

Paper mail

Here’s how it works for paper mail:

When you get around to reading your mail,

1. open up one piece
2. read what you need to read,
3. write out any bill and put in return envelope
4. file the bill for later mailing or put it in your out-going mail pile right away
5. file any other important papers, etc.
6. toss the rest
7. repeat with the next piece of mail

Email

The principle works basically the same for e-mail:

1. open up an e-mail
2. read what you need to
3. record/save what you need for later
4. delete

That’s it. Touch each piece once, deal with it, and presto! no clutter plus more time and energy to work on the things that are really important to you in your life.

There may be other applications for this strategy, but I’ll leave it for you to figure out where you can apply it in your daily life.