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Rita Emmett is a professional speaker who leads workshops on clutter and procrastination. Author of The Procrastinator's Handbook (more than 150,000 copies sold) and The Procrastinating Child, Emmett has dispensed advice on NBC's "Today Show" and in Time, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Family Circle, and Parents. She also publishes a monthly online "anticrastination" tipsheet. Emmett lives in Des Plaines, Illinois.

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The Clutter-Busting Handbook

Walker & Company

Chapter One

Computer Clutter

Some people say that the single best paper-clutter reducer is the computer. Well, it’s true that a piece of paper can be tossed once it’s entered into the computer, but then what about all that computer clutter?

All of the principles for getting control of paper apply to computer clutter as well. To say that you will return to an e-mail and handle it later is exactly the same as setting down a paper on your desk and putting off that decision.

Address the following areas of computer clutter each week. Delete:

• cookies (that is, text files stored on your computer from Web sites you’ve visited)*
• temporary Internet files
• contents of your recycle bin for PC or trash file for Macs
• junk mail
• old e-mails that mean nothing to you now
• old versions of any new programs you have installed
• cartoons and goofy pictures that your friends have sent you, and anything else in your download directory you don’t need

And just as with paper files, give your computer files names that mean something to you so you’ll be able to retrieve them.

Another tip: If you just need to skim a file, try to do so on the screen and avoid printing it out. Otherwise, you will have added to your paper clutter.

*Cookies can track how often you visit a site, or save your logon name and password. Sometimes these files include graphics and sound files that gobble up a lot of computer memory.

E-mails
“I’ll finish reading all my new e-mails first. Then I’ll come back and reply to this one.” Such a plan inevitably leads to wild e-clutter. Treat e-mail – whether at home or at work – as you would treat your snail mail.

• Delete the junk mail without opening or reading it.
• Make decisions about e-mails the minute you open them.
• Reply to every one that you can right away.
• The ones that you cannot reply to immediately should be put in an “Urgent” file so you can get to them as soon as you have the time.
• After replying to an e-mail, delete it or set up a file folder for it.
• Rather than carrying each person’s e-mail to individual folders, group them in categories (friends, work, special interests, clutter tips, awaiting response)
• Don’t get sucked into forwarding jokes, poems, and stories when you don’t have the time to do so.
• Every time you start to write an e-mail, ask yourself, “Do I have time to do this? Is this the best use of my time right now?”

Excerpted from The Clutter-Busting Handbookby Rita Emmett Copyright © 2005 by Rita Emmett. Excerpted by permission.
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