Your Organized Life

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Two of the probable responses to seeing April 15th come and go are the sigh of relief that the whole thing is over for another year and the “whack up side of the head” that doing your taxes was such a pain because your files weren’t organized.

Organizing an office, and in particular files, is one of the most dreaded organizational challenges. (And I use the word “challenges” to avoid what most people would like to call file organization.) But getting your files together and maintaining that order is not hard. In fact, it’s really, really easy if you take it in steps.

1. Get Ready

• You’re going to need some supplies and a place to put your files — No, not a shopping bag — so estimate how much filing space you’re going to need and get a file cabinet a bit bigger than what you thought you needed (because files grow).
• Also get some hanging files and manila folders to go in them. Note: The hanging files usually come with tab-type label holders, but if you want something different, look around the office-supply store and see what appeals to you.
• Get one largish box and several flat ones big enough to hold papers.

2. Sort the Papers

• Get everything that needs filing together and put it in a box. (I recommend using boxes for this process because lose papers tend to “roam.”)
• Decide on the categories you’ll need — categories should be biggish and include things like health/medical related papers, all insurance papers, warranties and manuals, etc. — and label (nothing fancy, just a reminder label) a box for each category.
  Note: One of your “categories” should be Trash. Remember: If you don’t keep it, you won’t have to file it.

• Put on some music or even turn on the TV and sort everything into the boxes.

3. Set Up the Filing Cabinet

• You’ve decided on your categories, so make labels for the hanging files, one for each category.
• Put them in the file in alphabetical order. Note: I know there are some people who like to sort things by color, and if you really like that kind of thing . . . well, whatever works. I just find alpha order to be the simplest and easiest to maintain.
• Now get your manila envelopes and label them with subcategories. You probably got a feel for these while you were tossing things into the big category boxes; for example, your insurance category probably has subcategories like car insurance, homeowners insurance, and life insurance. If you can’t remember all the subcategories right now, don’t worry because you can always add more as the need arises.
• All that’s left to do now is to sort the papers into the manila folders and put the manila subcategory folders into the big category hanging files.

Filing is really one of those things that seems worse than it really is, Like most things, if you break it down into steps and maintain the system you’ve established, there’s not much to it. And you’ll save yourself a lot of headaches by always being able to find what you need when you need it.