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The Weekly Tittle is an exercise designed to focus your attention on a specific space, aspect, or challenge of decluttering and organizing your home. We assign a new tittle in each webcast/podcast, then check on your progress the following week.

A Thing of Which We Can Be Certain

It’s the end of February, a good time to start thinking about preparing your taxes. We know you’re groaning, and we hear you. But now is a better time to start than April 12, so let’s spend a little time on taxes this week. Your assignment will vary depending on where you are so far in the tax-prep process:

• If you’ve done nothing at all, your version of the homework is to sift through all the standing paperwork, looking for things related to your taxes. Create your catchall place to gather your tax docs, such as a file folder or a document box or pleated expanding folder. Browse your stacks of paper and pull out any envelopes that say “Important Tax Document”—or anything that you think might support your tax return. Don’t worry about sorting. Just gather everything into one place.
• If you’ve got your documents gathered already, then your homework is to sort them and start preparations to use the documents. And recheck any stacks of mail for missed documents.
• If your materials are generally in order, then start the calculations needed for preparing the return. A big one for The Clutter Fairy is the mileage report. There’s a lot of data that goes into making mileage deductible, and it takes a lot of time to organize it.

For the full discussion of this week’s tittle, watch the Weekly Tittle segment on YouTube.