Setting up a home filing system to help organize all of your paperwork is a huge task. It’s hard to know what paperwork you need to keep and what paperwork you can toss. Creating a filing system that you can use at home will help reduce the paper clutter in your home.
In this post, I’m going to walk you through the 6 steps to take to create a filing system that organizes your paperwork. This will help you eliminate paper clutter and organize all of your important paperwork.
To make things easier I did create a free organized filing system worksheet to help you created an organized home filing system you can create with ease.
Create a filing system at home that will work for everyone
To be perfectly honest with you paper clutter overwhelms me. This is a project that I’ve been putting of for years because I just get so overwhelmed. There are so many things that you need to do to create a home filing system that it seems like I will never have the time to get through it all.
It was finally time for me to organize all of the paper clutter in our office. There were to0 many times that I was getting overwhelmed just walking into my office. Enough was enough so I visited Amazon got some supplies. Delivery time gave me the time I needed to start going through all of the papers.
I needed my filing system to be:
- Easy to use
- Keep us all organized
- Something that I’ll stick to
Sometimes it can be hard to stick to a new system so I try to make it as uncomplicated as I possibly can. That way I can count on my family and me to stick to the system I put in place.
Home Filing System
Every home needs a good and organized home filing system. This will keep all of your important documents organized and easy to find. This helps cut down on paper clutter and it saves you time when you go to look for something important.
I recently needed to go get a new license and this time I’m getting an enhanced license and that requires a birth certificate a few other forms of ID. Our home filing system was such an overwhelming mess I couldn’t find the documents I was looking for.
The great news is since I organized our filing system I was able to find all of the documents I needed. As you can see below, all of my files are busting at the seems.
What you need for a filing system
The filing system I put together is a portable system just because I want to store all of the paperwork in the closet of the office (an update is coming soon!).
What I used were:
- 2 plastic filing tubs (1 for the family and 1 for the blog)
- Hanging file folders
- Folders
- Label Maker
- The free organized filing system printable
The plastic tubs I thought would work great and would be easy to open and close when it was needed. We currently have a 4 drawer filing cabinet that is an eyesore. It takes up too much space and it’s impossible to find anything in there.
Once you have all of your items together it’s time to follow these following steps in order to organize your paper clutter.
- Gather up all of your paperwork
- Create categories
- Create labels
Eliminate paper clutter
In order for you to eliminate paper clutter you really need a system in place. Gather up all of the paperwork you have and then separate into the following categories:
- Important
- Not sure
- Toss
The important paperwork is pretty self-explanatory. You’ll be filing this away soon. All of the toss paperwork you’ll want to shred or recycle. The not sure pile you can go through and determine if you need to keep by following these rules:
- Most bills and other paperwork keep for a year
- Tax info keep for 7 years
- Can you create an electronic file?
Filing system categories
Once all of your paperwork has been sorted it’s time to create categories. I like to create main categories and then subcategories. Here are the main categories I used:
- Utilities
- Banking
- Credit Cards
The main categories will be added to the hanging file folders and then I created subcategories to help organize the paperwork a little further. This helps with overwhelm. Here are a few examples of what I used for subcategories:
- Electric
- Auto Insurance
- Property Taxes
The list can be endless when it comes to subcategories that’s why I like to narrow it to 3-5 subcategories this way you don’t have too much paperwork in a category.
To make this a little simpler for you, I created a free home filing system checklist for you to use to help you create an organized home filing system.
Organizing your home filing system
Once you have all of your filing system categories labeled and added to folders it is time to add your paperwork into its new home. This part shouldn’t take too long since you’ve created a category for all of your important paperwork.
Keeping an organized filing system
In order to keep your filing system organized you’ll want to implement a rotating schedule. What this means is about once a month you’ll want to cycle your paperwork. For example, you’ll want to remove old utility bills only keeping years worth on hand.
Schedule a time once a month to cycle through old paperwork allowing you to keep a filing system that is clean and organized.
Filing paperwork doesn’t have to be a tough task. By following the steps I shared in this post you can create and maintain an organized home filing system with ease.
Take some time, remove old bills and paperwork that you just don’t need to ensure you can eliminate paper clutter from your home. To make this process even simpler I’ve created a checklist and a category and subcategory list that you can use. Click the button to download the free home organized filing system.
I want to thank you so much for stopping by. Have an amazing day!
Jenn
