Get Organized…Paper Clutter, part 2
Hi! It’s me again. Talking to you about paper and how it is the bane of our existence and probably the worst clutter culprit in our homes. If you didn’t catch the first part where we talked about daily paper clutter you can catch up here. Today we are talking about the important papers and documents you may need to keep and ways to keep those items organized and accessible.
The first part we touched on is making it a DAILY HABIT to sort through all paper as it comes into your house and place it in the appropriate area:
Trash/Recycling
Action
To Be Filed
Well how do you know which documents need to be saved and filed? When setting up your filing system here are some key categories to consider.
Personal Identification
Birth certificates
Social Security cards
Passports
Marriage certificates
Death Certificates
These are the items I highly recommend you invest in a fireproof safe for storage. They are a pain to get quick access to if lost or damaged and you generally need one of these to gain access to the other.
Legal Documents:
Wills
Living wills
Power of attorney documents
Advance healthcare directives
Divorce decrees
*Make sure whoever needs access to end of life documents knows where these are!
Financial Documents:
Tax returns
W-2 forms
1099 forms
Bank statements
Investment account statements
Mortgage documents
Loan documents
Many of these items can be found in your online account so you don’t even need to keep them. Alternatively, going paperless on those items will immediately reduce the paper coming into your home and the energy to even think about them. Here is a guide that breaks down how long to keep certain documents. However I am not you and our needs are not the same so always check with your tax professional or accountant if you have questions.
Healthcare Records:
Health insurance cards
Medical records
Prescriptions
Immunization records
Property Documents:
Real estate deeds
Property tax bills
Homeowner's insurance policies
Important Receipts and Invoices:
Major appliance purchases
Home improvement receipts
Vehicle purchase documents
Medical expense receipts
Depending on what types of documents you are keeping, you may have sub categories within each main category. For example:
Main Category
CAR
Sub Categories
Purchase Documents
Loan Documents
Car Insurance
Warranty
Repair
In a traditional file cabinet system you would have a hanging file folder labeled CAR and within that hanging folder you would have the subcategories in individual labeled folders making it easy to find exactly what you need within seconds. If that is way too much effort for you, simply putting your car documents in a folder labeled CAR and calling it a day is fine too. If you create a system that is too difficult for you to keep up it defeats the purpose of the system and you are back to stacks on your surfaces. So keep it simple if you are a newbie. You can always tweak your system as you go.
You can also create a digital file cabinet if you truly want to go paperless in much the same way as outlined above. You can create folders and sub folders on your desktop or a cloud service such as Dropbox or Google Drive. You can even have a mixture of both. It’s your system so do what works for you.
Let’s review! In order to keep on top of the paper clutter that is stressing you out you need to :
ADDRESS INCOMING PAPER DAILY
SET UP A FILE SYSTEM THAT WORKS FOR YOU SO YOU
ACTUALLY FILE THOSE PAPERS
I know you can do this but we are always here for you! If you need some help getting started please reach out to set up a free consultation!