I try to keep a vague sense of organization of my paperwork throughout the year, but often enough it gets a little chaotic. This is a good time to get half organized or completely chaotic paperwork into more of a semblance of order.

That’s anything you’ve printed out for later reading. Check stubs. Bills. Notes on what you want to accomplish that you’ve written out. All the random papers that have to do with your business that you want to keep. All the other papers that seem to materialize from nowhere.

You may have taken the first step toward this if you did yesterday’s idea of cleaning your desk. But did you really organize things or just get them approximately where you need them to be?

Really think about which papers you need to keep. It’s amazing how many things you think you need to keep really aren’t that important when you look at them a month or two later. If you aren’t really going to refer back to it and you don’t need to keep it in order to have accurate records do you really need to hold onto it?

If you’re like me, your desk gets pretty messy. Mine gets the mail on it, my daughter’s returned school work, random baby toys and things that I actually need for my business. It gets messy pretty quickly.

In preparation for the new year, this is a great time to get it all cleaned up.

With a computer I don’t always need a perfectly clear desk as such, but it can really help mentally. Clutter can be distracting. Sometimes important papers even end up in the clutter.

If your work area is in a common area of the house rather than an office you can close off, it’s also nice to have things look good for the holidays.

Reading and commenting on blog posts can be a good use of time or a complete time suck. Take some time before the end of the year and figure out which blogs in your reader are worth your while.

In some ways this is like yesterday’s suggestion to clean out your email newsletter subscriptions. You don’t want to read the blogs that aren’t providing you good information or are overly promotional.

But you should add in some consideration for which ones you comment on. Whether the links are follow or no follow, blog comments can be useful in bringing attention to your own site. Think about which blogs you often find you have some thoughts to contribute.

Also keep subscribing to any blogs that you are considering being a guest blogger on. You want to keep up on what topics get covered there and on any requests they have for guest posts.

As the end of the year gets closer, it’s a good time to clear out some of the clutter that slows you down as you work. Email is a great place to start.

If you’re like me, you end up subscribing to a lot of newsletters over time. Some turn out to be worth reading, others just end up being deleted unread.

If you’ve been letting subscriptions get out of hand, it’s time to start rethinking each one.

There are a lot of good reasons to clear out a particular newsletter. Many do little more than hype the next big product launch. It can be interesting to see what’s out there, but you should only be buying information that you can use at the time. Buy too many products and you’re not going to have the time to use any of them.

Don’t just hit the delete button on newsletters you know you aren’t reading. Open it up and hit the unsubscribe link.

You should also be thinking if you’re getting good information from the ones you do read. If you’re getting information that helps you in your personal or professional life it’s probably worth reading. If you really enjoy the newsletter it’s probably also worth reading. If you aren’t sure, it’s probably time to unsubscribe.

Be pretty free about unsubscribing. You aren’t likely to really miss any that you unsubscribe from, but if you do you can always go back to its site and resubscribe.

I just got word that SBI! is having their buy one, get one free holiday sale on right now. It runs until December 25, 2009.

SBI! is great for helping to build businesses. They have some pretty good results to show too. They work for many kinds of online businesses, from direct sales to affiliate marketing to selling your own products or services.

You can use this sale to get two SBI! sites for yourself or give one to a family member or friend while keeping one for yourself. It could be a lot of fun if you and a friend are both trying to get going with a home business, as so many people are.

Take a look at the potential starting your own site has. This is a great time to get started. Call it a Christmas gift and New Year’s resolution combined into one.

And get moving. December 25, 2009 is not that far away.