Want to know one of the best things you can resolve to do to improve your life? No, it's not losing that extra five pounds, at least not from your waistline. It's trimming the fat from your files, slimming down your pile of old mail, and starting the (tax) year off with a plan to get the paper aspects of your life better organized.

Still dragging your feet? Then consider this: According to a U.S. study cited by The Wall Street Journal, the average executive spends six weeks a year searching for documents lost in clutter. This translates into more than $6,000 in lost productivity for an employee making $60,000 a year. Even for folks no longer doing the daily grind, time spent searching for papers means less time to enjoy family, read, volunteer, or play golf. What is your paperwork pile costing you?

If that's enough to convince you, start by doing an honest assessment of your current system. You should, at the minimum, have a plan for: (1) handling paperwork as it comes into your home by mail or other means; (2) filing paperwork that needs to be kept; (3) securing papers that are irreplaceable; (4) purging your files of outdated documents; and (5) safely discarding old papers.

Many professional organizers swear by the "Four D's of Paper Management," otherwise known as: Do it, Delay it, Delegate it, Dump it. The idea is that paper can be handled in one of four ways: it can be dealt with immediately, placed in a file for future action, handed off to someone else, or discarded. The time to categorize your paperwork is when you first handle it; the more times you touch the same piece of paper, the more time you waste.

Use visual cues like color-coding to cut down on the time it takes you to locate files. Assign each family member a color, along with different colors for categories such as medical information, house-related documents, taxes, credit cards, and bills.