Tips on How to Organize Your Documents

Organizing your documents may sound like a complicated task but it is critical to be able to find what you need and when you need it. Perhaps you have everything in one filing cabinet and think it’s organized, but are you able to quickly find the document you are looking for? Maybe you are one of the lucky ones who can always find things quickly no matter where you may have stuffed it three months ago but if you’re not, here are some simple steps to save you time in locating that eluded piece of paper.

For starters, there is really no point in keeping an electric or gas bill from twenty years ago. Normally, documents need to be kept for seven to ten years. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule such documents like birth certificates, marriage licenses, deeds, and titles should be kept indefinitely. It is also a good idea to hold on to court documents just in case you ever need them in the future.

Once you have decided on a time limit for your documents, start eliminating the ones you no longer need to keep. It is best to run these through a paper shredder if you have one. If a paper shredder is not available to you, make sure to thoroughly destroy these documents before throwing them out in order to protect your identity.

The next step in this process is to develop an easy-to-understand filing system. What works for you may not work for someone else. If you have no idea where to begin, it is best to first separate items into similar stacks such as utilities, deeds/titles, tax documents, and so on. Once you have this done, you may choose to go one step further and create more specific categories.

After you have everything sorted to fit your needs, it is a good idea to organize each category by year if applicable. Obviously, documents such as titles, deeds, birth certificates, etc. do not need to be organized by year. Use your discretion in this area; don’t make more work for yourself than is necessary to fit your needs.

Once everything is completely sorted, it is time to put it all together in an orderly filing system. If you choose to break things down by year, start a master folder for each year and then create subfolders for each category. It is up to you as to whether your system is ordered from oldest to newest or newest to oldest.

If you do not already have a filing cabinet, it is a good idea to consider purchasing one. If this is not in your budget, consider using boxes. Make sure to label the boxes appropriately to allow for easier hunting in the future. Whether you go with a filing cabinet or a box system, document hunting will be a much easier task and it will also make filing your new documents a breeze.