The bane of many homeowners is the huge amounts of paperwork that seem to pile up. In our modern world we’re deluged with papers, and many of them are important enough for us to keep. We can end up with unorganized piles of papers, and we can’t find the things we need when we want them. We vow to do better, and we may even clean the old papers out, but before long, the piles will grow again, unless you give them a proper place to hide.
Even if it’s only one drawer or a plastic milk crate, you need to keep everything pertaining to your business matters in one place. You can also buy plastic file boxes and file folders which work nicely for organizing a small amount of papers. In this box you need to set up a simple filing system. Write the specific category on the tab of a file folder for each type of paper you have. In the interest of space, you can combine certain items into one file, such as putting your light, water, gas, and phone bills into one file called “utilities”.
If you find that you need more space than this, there are larger file boxes available, but they will also begin to take up room you might not have. As a space saver you will find that there are very nice decorative file cabinets you can use as end tables in your living room. You can find these in all prices, ranging from inexpensive corrugated cardboard and pressed wood to lovely tables in oak, maple and mahogany. They will look beautiful and neatly hide away all of your important papers.
For papers that don’t seem to belong anywhere else, you can have a miscellaneous file. Put all the papers you think you might need but which don’t belong in any other file into this one. The trick to keeping a good miscellaneous file, though, is to make time to clean it out regularly. By then you may have more papers about a certain subject which you can group together and put into their own folder. You’ll find other papers you know you’ll never use that you can throw away.
If you have children, you know about all of the important notes that come home from school. These papers will include things like parent-teacher conferences, field trip permission slips, notices of school programs, and reminders of other events. Even if all of these events don’t seem important to you, they are very important to your child, and you need to keep track of them. All you need is a clipboard which you keep hanging in your kitchen to clip them to. Every morning you’ll be able to look through the items on the clipboard to see if there’s anything you need to take care of that day.
Mail is another item that often gets misplaced or begins to pile up if you don’t keep it filed. If you don’t have the time to file the things that arrive in the mail every day, make yourself a folder called “To File”. Then make sure that you take the time to file what’s in the file at least once a week. A gorgeous basket hanging on the door you use when you leave the house also will provide a place for outgoing mail so that it will catch your eye when you go out instead of being forgotten.
After tax time each year, it’s a good idea to go through your papers and toss all the ones you no longer need, like last year’s utility bills. Then your files will be neat and ready for another year.
Home Storage & Organization Related Article
Making Your Own Magazine Storage Boxes
What do you do with your old magazines? Even though you’ve finished reading them, they’re full of good articles, recipes, and how-to projects that you’re reluctant to get rid of. The problem is that magazines are hard to store...
