5 Quick Tips to Improve Home Filing

Are there days when you wish your home filings system ran a faster and easier?  You may work from home or only use your home filing system to store and organize the essential documents, bills, and receipts of your home either way you probably access your home filing system every day, or you should be if you were maintaining your system!  Here are five easy suggestions that you can start using TODAY to create a faster better system.

Get  What You Need Quickly

Quickly being able to find the document you need is an important aspect to being organized.  Here are a couple ideas to help you be able to do just that.  Color-code your files to make them faster to find them.  Many retail locations offer a large selection of colored folders, labels, and pens or markers to choose from.  Color coding gives you a quick visual way to find things.  As an example if all of your warranty information is in blue folders it will be easy to locate when you have a problem with an appliance!

Another option, group like things together.  This makes your home filing system even more user friendly.  You can, for example, store all your tax files together. So in the same drawer contain your previous years returns as well as your tax documents including W-2s and other paperwork.

Don’t Put Too Much in One Place

Don’t go for max capacity on your file folders.  If your file folders are stuffed to the max with papers it will be difficult to find the one you are looking for. If you have to empty a folder to know what is in it you are not filing effectively.  Not to mention a drawer full of stuffed files is much harder to open!

Don’t know where to start minimizing you huge files?  Determine if you really need to keep all the papers you have filed.  If after a careful review you don’t have anything else you can shred or recycle think about subdividing big files.  Really large file folders can be divided into additional interior files. 

Clear Off Your Desk

When a project is current you may find that the instructions, papers, and maps connected to it are left out where you can access them daily.  They occupy a place of importance on your desk or white board, but now the project or event has come to an end.  Don’t delay.  Organize the related paperwork.  Sort what you will keep and what needs to be shredded or recycled.  When you know what you paperwork you will need to keep clear your desk and file it!

The Electronic Age and Paper Files

Keep track of what files you keep in paper and what you have electronically. Don’t spend time sifting through computer files only to remember you never scanned a document in, and have to go searching for the paper copy.  Come to a decision about what will be stored in paper format and what you will store on your computer. If you plan on keeping a paper document, you don’t need it on your computer. If the electronic version exists you may not need the paper copy.

Look into a Fire Box

Are you storing passports, birth certificates, marriage licenses, divorce papers, deeds, death certificates and wills in your home filing systems?  If so I strongly suggest purchasing a locked fire box.  These documents are better kept in a safe location in case of emergency.

Use these five steps to make your home filing system work better for you!  Combine these steps with the commitment to spend a couple minutes every day to maintaining you system and you will find you home and filing system will both become more organized.