File Therapy

Some people have issues with their weight.  I have issues with clutter.  Not the "Hoarder with dead cat behind the couch" type of clutter.  More the "I might need this some day, I don't have a parent's basement to keep old stuff in, I'm not ready to make a decision about that yet, I'm not sure about that so I'll keep it" kind of clutter.  Lots of papers, mini Allen wrenches from Ikea furniture kits, stubby pencils, coupons, recipes... you get the idea.

I have always been this way.  Early in my marriage, we didn't have a set plan on bill paying, and a few bills got lost in piles of paper.  But I am always trying to get better and I think I have improved with age.  I am now the designated bill payer, and we have a simple system of magazine files for important mail to get put into, so at least it isn't getting lost!

We have had the same 4-drawer file cabinet for about 18 years.  I think there are papers in it since the day it arrived in our first apartment.  For a long time now I have been dreaming of reorganizing the entire file cabinet, especially after I was having trouble closing the drawers.  I am pretty good at filing papers; I'm not very good at weeding out the old stuff we don't need anymore.

I happened to see a picture of a newly re-organized file cabinet, and I was inspired.  I saw this on the Blog a bowl full of lemons and thought maybe I could actually do something similar:

The blogger spent one day reorganizing her files into color-coded hanging folders.

Well, I've spent one week, and I'm still not done!  But I have made huge progress.

I started out ordering boxes of colored hanging folders.  Oops!  I thought I was getting five colors, but it was only four.  Sigh.  I got new labels for the folder tabs, and decided how I wanted to organize the files we have.

I came up with five basic categories:  Home/Auto/Medical for insurance, repair and maintenance records; Rental Property records; Financial, for investments, bank accounts and taxes; Monthly Expenses including utilities, credit cards and other bills; and miscellaneous family and school records.  I assigned a color to each category, although the Monthly Expenses and Financial groups have to share because I don't know how to read a product description correctly.  Hopefully they will get along.  This is still a work in progress, but it seems to be working so far.

Ten-year old "This is Not a Bill" insurance statements and similar items have been sent to the shred pile.  I'm hopefully hanging onto the things we are supposed to save.  There is a basic list of how long to keep documents here on the USA.gov site.  My husband is even more conservative about how long to keep certain tax and investment records so they get a pass for now.

My files don't look quite as pretty as the photo above, but they will soon!  And then I will post my own photo so stay-tuned.