Filed under: Your Home, Projects, Storage & Cleaning, Storage & Organization
If only your filing system were this pristine! Photo: Monalyn Gracia/Corbis
Take Baby Steps
Rather than tackling those mountains of papers all at once, limit your organizing to just ten minutes a day. By keeping what's important and tossing out what's no longer valuable you can sidestep that anxiety-provoking mind-grind and turn your heap-ing into routine housekeeping. (FYI: That colossal mess on your desk is your life on paper. If something goes missing, things can and will go wrong.)
Start by Piling
Tedious as it might seem, however, file organization can be as easy as 1-2-3, just by using common sense. To get started snatch a stack of papers and clear a counter. Start by building ten "like with like" heaps, each separately labeled as follows:
o. career/work
o. education
o. financial
o. health/fitness
o. hobbies
o. home
o. legal
o. paid bills
o. bills to be paid
o. miscellaneous
Subdivide
Once you've made your way through your mayhem by sorting your formerly chaotic pile into 10 neat stacks, begin to break down each new pile by group i.e. electric bills, student loans, parole violations (What? Things happen?!?), résumés, etc., and then create labeled folders for each. You can additionally eliminate some of the piles of files by signing up for e-bills and using online banking to make easy and secure electronic e-payments through the internet.
Hang Onto The Essentials
There are other personal documents, that, for obvious reasons, you might just wanna' hold on to: Birth certificates, deeds, messy divorce junk, marriage licenses, social security cards, wills - you get my drift. Make a permanent and easy-to-find home for these essential documents, and share its location with your family members.
Tax Tip
Also, for tax purposes, the IRS has three years to issue an audit from your date of filing. To make it easy on yourself, when finishing your taxes, put them in a new folder labeled for that year and create a new tax folder for the present year.
Shred The Rest
a shredder is an essential tool in the paper organizing process. If you forgo the cathartic kick of shredding, you run the potential risk of having your identity stolen when your documents end up in the recycling.
Enjoy Your Newly-Found Free Time
Organizing helps you not waste your time looking, looking, looking for that certain napkin with that important phone number on it. Instead, organize your files, make a plan, and stick to it.