Jump Start January: Week 2 Day 5

Today’s Jump Start decluttering activity is a quick sprint to get on top of your utility bills, and basically show them who’s boss.

Quite a lot of us are scared of our utility bills or even just bored of them, and they often don’t get kept in line or dealt with in a timely fashion as a result. In the long run it’s much better to keep them under control, and deep down we all know that.

In most homes, printed bills tend to pile up somewhere, so go to that spot (or those spots, if there’s more than one in your home) and get everything together. Collect the lot: gas, electricity, water rates, council tax, broadband, landline, TV subscriptions, mobile phones, etc.

Now open anything that’s unopened. Put blank envelopes straight into the recycling, and put printed envelopes to one side for shredding later.

Now tackle the bills themselves. Ideally, get them into a ringbinder-style folder in chronological order, grouped together by utility, so pages can’t slip out and get lost or mixed up.

Most of us have paperless billing for some or all of our bills too. Collect those up by making a browser toolbar favourites folder for your utilities, ideally using the specific pages for logging into your own online accounts rather than the home pages of the companies themselves (saves time).

If you operate your billing via apps, group those apps together in a bills folder on your mobile or tablet.

Check for additional messages as well as just the bills – make sure there’s nothing urgent you’ve missed.

That’s it for today. If you have time (or you’re already nicely organised with your utilities bills), check through the paperwork and online bills to make sure there are no mistakes. If a bill seems too high, query it and switch to a different tariff or provider if necessary.

How good are you at organising your bills? How are you going to blitz them today?