niccig
09-08-2014, 04:34 AM
Finally, the filing cabinet is finished. I had 3 years of paperwork piled up as no room in the filing cabinet, as it had not been purged in years. I now have 3 bankers boxes full of paper to take for shredding. We were keeping way more than was needed.
I bought the Freedom Filer system http://www.freedomfiler.com/Home.cfm It's $40 and you get preprinted color coded labels, a book explaining the system and extra labels to customize as needed. I decided on this system as it's supposed to be self-purging, that is, as you put something into the file, you discard what was there if it's not needed to be kept, rather than constantly adding new paperwork and never purging out-dated documents as who has the time to purge the filing cabinet! We'll see how it works in practice.
It's set up so there's monthly files for bills and for active tax documents for 2 years, so on Jan 1,you can put the new year's empty files in place and remove the old year until ready to do taxes, then discard what don't need to keep. I thought this was pretty ingenious as we never do taxes first of the year and end up having a mingling of files for a couple of months and then have to sort through it all to find what we need. Last couple of years, I haven't gotten around to this, hence the paperwork mess.
There's a section for documents you replace eg. when get new health insurance policy, remove old one and put in archive if going to keep or discard if don't need to keep anymore.
There's a section for permanent files - things you will always keep eg. health records, house property title, birth certificates etc. Much of what would be here, I've put in the fire safe, they one I bought 5 years ago and never set-up as couldn't find what needed in the filing cabinet. Thankfully, no fire!
There's an archive of 10 years for tax returns, receipts needed for taxes and they suggest to put in home insurance policy, and anything else may want to keep, eg legal paperwork. Purge this to only keep 10 years. You could keep less.
The labels are set-up so they don't need updating eg. the 10 year archive labels are 01, 02, 03 for the year in the decade. 01 currently has 2011 taxes, and then it'll have 2021, 2031. I won't have to relabel it. There's ways to customize the labels, eg. for "vehicles - service", I added a /h/ sticker for my car (Honda) and a /p/ sticker for DH's car (Prius). When we get a new car, I'll just replace the letter sticker, but the rest of the label will stay the same.
It took me some time to set all this up, if you're files are in better shape, it should go more quickly. I could probably have set something like this up on my own, but it was pretty simple to check their book for where to put something and use their label. And the color-coding really helps when looking for a file. Everything now fits in the filing cabinet (no more boxes of paperwork sitting around) and there's plenty of room to grow as needed. You can search on youtube and people have reviewed the system in a video.
I bought the Freedom Filer system http://www.freedomfiler.com/Home.cfm It's $40 and you get preprinted color coded labels, a book explaining the system and extra labels to customize as needed. I decided on this system as it's supposed to be self-purging, that is, as you put something into the file, you discard what was there if it's not needed to be kept, rather than constantly adding new paperwork and never purging out-dated documents as who has the time to purge the filing cabinet! We'll see how it works in practice.
It's set up so there's monthly files for bills and for active tax documents for 2 years, so on Jan 1,you can put the new year's empty files in place and remove the old year until ready to do taxes, then discard what don't need to keep. I thought this was pretty ingenious as we never do taxes first of the year and end up having a mingling of files for a couple of months and then have to sort through it all to find what we need. Last couple of years, I haven't gotten around to this, hence the paperwork mess.
There's a section for documents you replace eg. when get new health insurance policy, remove old one and put in archive if going to keep or discard if don't need to keep anymore.
There's a section for permanent files - things you will always keep eg. health records, house property title, birth certificates etc. Much of what would be here, I've put in the fire safe, they one I bought 5 years ago and never set-up as couldn't find what needed in the filing cabinet. Thankfully, no fire!
There's an archive of 10 years for tax returns, receipts needed for taxes and they suggest to put in home insurance policy, and anything else may want to keep, eg legal paperwork. Purge this to only keep 10 years. You could keep less.
The labels are set-up so they don't need updating eg. the 10 year archive labels are 01, 02, 03 for the year in the decade. 01 currently has 2011 taxes, and then it'll have 2021, 2031. I won't have to relabel it. There's ways to customize the labels, eg. for "vehicles - service", I added a /h/ sticker for my car (Honda) and a /p/ sticker for DH's car (Prius). When we get a new car, I'll just replace the letter sticker, but the rest of the label will stay the same.
It took me some time to set all this up, if you're files are in better shape, it should go more quickly. I could probably have set something like this up on my own, but it was pretty simple to check their book for where to put something and use their label. And the color-coding really helps when looking for a file. Everything now fits in the filing cabinet (no more boxes of paperwork sitting around) and there's plenty of room to grow as needed. You can search on youtube and people have reviewed the system in a video.