Labels for LifeLabels for Life will give tips for organizing your life, home and office.

Is bill-paying getting your goat? Are those staggering heaps of incoming mail lying on your kitchen table, your dining table and coffee table making you see red? Here’s a surefire way to banish them forever.

Don’t grant them a resting place in your home…..even for a minute! As soon as you pick up the day’s mail, sort them into piles that have one of the three labels, “keep,” “toss” and “ID theft”. It’ll take 30 seconds. Discard your “toss” pile and the envelopes and inserts from the rest of the mail. The “ID theft” pile consists of those invitations from credit card companies etc. You need to shred those letters immediately before tossing them away. That leaves your “keep” pile, which are mostly bills.

Use a bill paying system for your bills. Most banks now offer free billpay or choose one that does. Financial programs such as Quicken also offer this convenience for a nominal charge. Stack your bills right next to your computer. You’ll need to spend an hour or so initially to enter them into your system. You’ll need to enter your bank account number and the account number of the businesses you need to pay, you enter right off of your bill. Once you’ve set this up, you can choose to make payments once a week or once every two weeks. Most businesses, like credit card companies let you adjust your bill due date so that you can arrange to pay most of your bills on one or two sittings at your computer.

You can even set up your payments to get paid 3 or 4 days before the bill due date. Now you’ve dispensed with envelopes, stamps, bills and all that clutter that lies around till you get your check book out and pay those bills. With a click of your mouse and five minutes of your time you’ve vanquished those staggering piles of bills!