April 16, 2018

Organizing and Adding Categories To Your Filing Cabinet

The moment you realize you can’t ignore your filing cabinet any longer.

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Over this past week I have sorted and sorted and sorted…..and I am so excited I need to scream, I’M DONE!!!!! My filing cabinet is organized and labeled and even color coded by category. Filing is so boring, it definitely needs a little color.

If you want to tackle your filing cabinet, click here for the best way to get started!

Filing Cabinet Categories

Here are the final categories we decided on:

Update! I have created printable file labels to help organize your filing cabinet!

Check them out HERE or by clicking on the image.

With the categories decided, I could finally begin reorganizing the folders.

I plugged away at the folders over several different nights. My process was to choose a color for the category, create a new folder, label it, sort through the old folder and then transfer the papers to the new folder. I used this process until all the folders were organized.

I used my label maker to create labels for all the folders. To help the main category tabs stand out, I added Washi Tape.

Did I mention I sorted a lot of papers? OH and my incredible husband manned the paper shredder and shredded for two hours!! Before shredding, make sure you are familiar with how long you need to keep papers, you do not want to get rid of something you need!

Check out the guide I listed in my post How To Organize A Filing Cabinet? The guide was really helpful. Also, make sure to shred documents with personal information or dispose of them properly. You don’t want that type of information floating around.

Back to the cabinet. In drawer two I had all our monthly bills. Here is the before picture.

Here is what it looks like after!

Organized and much more colorful!

Filing Cabinet Goals

The main goal was to empty out the papers we no longer needed, along with reorganizing the folders into more specific and helpful categories.

We accomplished both the goals and I am so happy to have this project done! If you would like to print off my category list, I will have it available on my printables page.