How To Organize Your Filing Cabinet

There is nothing pretty about organizing a filing cabinet.  Now the feeling of a huge accomplishment and an incredibly clean and tidy cabinet yes….but the process of actually sorting, no!  It is definitely time consuming.  Even once I actually decided to organize my filing cabinet, bought some pretty file folders….I still felt stumped.  I felt lost, where do you even start?

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OK…deep breath, grab a cup of coffee or a Lemonade and remember to tell yourself YOU CAN DO THIS!  Make sure to recite it halfway through…you might need it then too!

Reorganizing Your Filing Cabinet

To start I tried to break it down into smaller tasks.  First I needed to see if our filing system needs any changes.  Do you have all the categories you want?  Should you combine any categories?  If you are starting from scratch, figuring out what categories you want!  Let me tell you, I felt like our categories were ok…but I wanted to see a few examples of how others organized their filing cabinets.  Pinterest of course, was a great help.  Two things stood out, I found it helpful to see how other people organized their categories and two, your categories are very unique to you (besides a few basics like billing, investments, etc…).  You need to make sure your categories compliment your lifestyle and needs.  So now I was back to the epic question, what categories does my family need?

Categories For Your Filing Cabinet

I began sketching down some possible categories.

One big change is we decided to group all our insurances into one category.  Instead of having our home owners insurance under our home folder, and our auto insurance in our auto folder, we will have one category called insurance with Auto, Home and Life Folders.  We always ended up throwing home insurance in with the auto folder by accident because it all comes from the same company, I think having them all in the same area will be helpful.

Other decisions to think about, do you have a vehicle category and put repairs and title with it or put the title in with all the legal documents.  The bottom line is to create categories that coincide with the natural way you and your husband file things, it has to make sense and be helpful to you.  When I complete my organizing project next week, I will post a final sheet of all our categories.

Why am I so in love with file folders and cabinets!!  These are so adorable!

How Long Should You Keep Papers

My next question as I was beginning to reorganize my papers into their new folders,  was how long do I keep papers?  When is it ok to get rid of them?

Check Out This Amazing Guide: Financial Clutter by Suze Orman

I found this guide to be so helpful!  I felt like I was ready to finally dig in and organize my files.  Over the next few days I will get everything sorted out and show you the end result of my filing cabinet!  I can’t wait.

So if I could summarize my process so far, getting started is definitely the hardest step.  Keep in mind these 3 things when organizing your filing cabinet:

1. Decide if your current filing system is working and just needs a clean up or if you need to reorganize your entire cabinet.

2. Decide what categories you want and need.

3.  Use a guide to figure out how long you should keep papers and what is ok to get rid of!

Pin It Here!

Thanks so much for checking out my post and I really hope this helps you get started!  Remember YOU CAN DO THIS!

I bought all my folders here:

SMEAD JEWEL TONE FOLDERS              SMEAD GRAY HANGING FILE FOLDER