Is your house drowning in paperwork? With a few organizing tips, you can regain control.
Admit it: There are certain things you just don’t like to do.
It’s OK. We all have things in life that we would happily avoid for the rest of our lives. For my wife, it’s ironing. My kids would rather scrub dishes than actually talk on the phone (they’re teens). And I would be happy if teeth took care of themselves so I’d never have to go to the dentist.
As a professional organizer, I have noticed that there is one common task that most if not all my clients loathe doing: It’s going through their paperwork. I think most of them would rather scrape their gums with Velcro than do any paperwork.
I am fascinated by this, because (nerd alert!) I actually love doing paperwork. When I was a kid, I would get file folders to sort my “important” documents – lists of MLB transactions I kept; school awards and certificates; papers I wrote; and newspaper and magazine articles I liked (mostly about movies and sports).
These days, I enjoy sorting my financial papers and sending unwanted mail through the shredder. About 4 times a year, I get the basket in my office that collects receipts and other financial documents and bring it out to the family room. I turn on the TV to find something interesting to watch, then I begin to sort each paper by category (garbage, mortgage, etc.) and fold and place into properly labeled envelopes. When I’m done, I put the envelopes back into the drawer where I keep them until it’s time to sort all over again.
It may not be your sort of fun, but it works for me!
Don’t Mail It In
You don’t have to have the same zeal for taking care of your paperwork, but you can have a better approach to managing it. Putting an organizing system into practice will allow you to maintain control over your paperwork before it consumes every surface of your house.
The first place to start is your mail, since – next to you and your family bringing papers from work and school – it’s the primary means by which papers come into your house. Tackle the mail as soon as you bring it inside your home; I can’t stress that enough.
Junk mail goes right into the recycling can or shredder (more on that later). Bills and other items requiring your attention should be placed immediately into an easily accessible box or bin that you will sort through and empty on a weekly basis.
How to Take Control of Your Paperwork
Let’s say you don’t have your mail process in place yet. Let’s go one step further and say that you haven’t seen the top of your kitchen counters, coffee table, desktop, and other household surfaces since the Obama administration thanks to all the paperwork you have accumulated. Regardless of how your house looks like, I now help you clear the clutter and organize your paperwork in a few simple steps.
1. Gather all papers into 1 place. That’s right. Instead of multiple small messes, you’re going to go around and collect every piece of paper you find – this includes magazines and newspapers and kids’ school and home papers* – and make one giant pile. It’s always better to put like things together whenever you organize and clean a space, and paperwork is no different.
(* - Papers related to your kids – such as artwork, test papers, awards, and the like – should be handled differently. That’s a blog for a later time.)
2. Sort papers by category. Now that you have your mountain of paperwork, it’s time to make smaller hills. You can do this a number of ways. A lot of people may decide on 3 categories, which is a great place to start: Keep, Recycle, and Shred.
If you want to break down the Keep pile even further, you could do so into the following categories:
Action items (bills, permission forms, subscription renewals)
Household items (coupons, grocery mailers)
Archived items (items you’ll need but generally not for long periods of time, like manuals, warranties, etc.)
Before we get to the important stuff – aka what you want to keep, we need to discuss what to do with what you’re not keeping:
2a. Determine what is to be recycled or shredded. Let’s keep this one simple: If the paper contains any personal identification information, put it right in the Shred pile. Identifying information includes, but is not limited to, the following:
Bank account, legal, and medical information;
Home or email addresses;
Passwords or PIN numbers;
Personal signatures;
Social Security or phone numbers.
Based on those identifying pieces of information, here is a list of items that meet this criterion to be shredded:
Bank receipts (ATM, deposit) and statements
Checks (both canceled and voided)
Copied of legal documents (birth certificates, et al.)
Credit card statements
Credit reports
Donor requests from agencies you wish not to support
Employment documents
Expired documents (like driver’s licenses, passports)
Health care records (including pharmacy records and prescription receipts)
Insurance papers
Investment receipts and statements
Paystubs from old jobs
Pre-approved credit card, bank loan, health care, and insurance applications
If you have a bunch of paperwork to shred, I have an idea where you can take it all.
While this list could include more items, here’s the important thing to remember: If you don’t see any personal information on your paperwork, throw it into the Recycle pile. Popular recycled paperwork includes magazines and newspapers with all inserts, junk mail, blank envelopes, scratch paper, wrapping paper, etc.
3. Organize your Keep documents. For starters, the following documents are ones that you should keep forever with you in a safe, secure place:
Academic records and transcripts
Adoption papers
Baptismal, birth, and death certificates
Current employment records
Insurance policies
Legal documents (Advance Directive, Power of Attorney, etc.)
Marriage licenses
Medical records
Military records
Mortgage documents
Retirement and related documents
Tax documents
Titles (Home and auto)
Wills (living and final)
I would recommend keeping documents such as birth certificates, marriage licenses, Social Security cards, passports/visas, wills, and related documents in a fire safe box. Doing so would keep these documents preserved in the event of a catastrophe.
For Action documents in your Keep pile – such as bills, permission forms, or anything with an upcoming deadline – do just that: Act. Pay them, fill them out, mail them, etc. Also, keep your Household items (coupons, grocery circulars) in your kitchen, since you go through your cabinets and drawers to determine what you need when it’s time to go food shopping.
Finally, you can handle Archive items various ways. For example, I recommend keeping all your manuals and related warranties for appliances, power tools, electronics, etc., in one place. Some clients I have like to keep them in a large Ziploc bag or a special drawer in their house. I like to use a 3-ring binder and slide the manuals and warranties by category into clear sleeves.
There are general rules for how long other items in the Archive pile should be kept. The most well-known time frame is seven years for tax-related documents. Most file management experts will recommend considerably less time for other documents (like one year for pay stubs or tax bills), but time frames seem to vary; ask your financial person. “Keep until you sell it,” meanwhile, goes for home- and vehicle-related documents.
File This Away
4. Store your Keep documents. Aside from the aforementioned fire safe box, you can use other, cheaper ways to file your Keep paperwork. The most common method people use to organize papers are file folders that go into hanging folders in a filing cabinet or desk drawer. People also like to use plastic portable file boxes, though I think they are better suited for more important papers like taxes, insurance, and/or investment records.
The two most important things you need to know when implementing your filing system are as follows: (1) Make sure all folders are labeled properly so that you can file documents properly; and (2) make sure your files are easily accessible for when you need them.
Now that you have all the tips and tools you need to organize your paperwork effectively, are you ready to get started? If not, just imagine what your house will look like with all that clutter throughout your house gone.
That vision surely beats getting a root canal any day!
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Tom Harper is owner of Tom’s Organizing Made Simple LLC, a Bethlehem-based company dedicated to helping people declutter and organize their space, stuff, time, and/or tasks. Follow TOM’S on Facebook or Instagram.