Give some thought to the concept of going paperless in your home office and or your business office. Challenge yourself to see just how much paper clutter you can get rid of by scanning and storing what you need to keep on your computer.
As a professional organizer, the biggest concern my clients have is what to do with their paper. My answer is always to tell my clients to scan, file and store on their computer as much as they possibly can. Keep a file on your computer for personal/home and one for work. In each main file have file folders set up that clearly describe the papers you have saved in each.
You can have a file for your medical records, bills broken up into categories, car maintenance, children's education records, pet veterinary information etc. On the work side you can have a file folder for current projects, invoicing, clients etc. I always advise my clients to also keep important docs like this on a file share site like Dropbox so that your records are always accessible to you and saved remotely -- not just on your personal computer.
If paper is already piling up and you need to make a start at getting things in order don't be overwhelmed. Take the task piece by piece and allow yourself time to get your paper in order. Depending on how much past paperwork there is to go through set up a timeline for working on this project.
Take the most current paperwork first and but it in a large file storage box. Put this box next to the chair you like to watch TV in. Each night take a pile of papers in your lap and sort through them. Those papers that you can dispose of but need shredding should go in one pile. Those papers that should be scanned and saved on your computer should go in a basket and those papers you need to keep but need a hard copy as well should go in yet another basket.
At the end of the week spend time shredding the shred pile, scanning the scan pile and creating files on your computer for these documents. These papers that you don't need hard copies of then can be shredded. Finally the pages that should be scanned and saved on your computer and also saved in a hard copy can have hanging files created for them in your file cabinet and be saved to your computer.
If you take just an hour to sort a night and an hour or two over the weekend, you can take big steps towards getting your paper organized. Once your paper is under control, a weekly scan/file session of about an hour or less depending on your paper volume, can be easily maintained.
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