Vicky Silverthorn, a professional organiser, shares her fool-proof paperwork sorting system. Here’s how to get organised and never be overwhelmed by paperwork EVER again…
You will need:
1 multi-drawer filing cabinet
1 letter tray that sits on top
Labels
What to do:
Step 1:
Gather together every scrap of paperwork from the house, from documents you’ve already stashed away to new letters that have just plopped onto the doormat.
Step 2:
Clear a large space – perhaps a dining table, or space on the floor where you can lay out piles of paper without them being disturbed.
Step 3:
Start to sort all the pieces of paperwork you have into categories on the floor. Don’t get waylaid by the content or sorting them into date order at this point; for now you are just categorising everything into neat piles (e.g. ‘medical’, ‘bills’, ‘receipts’ and so on).
Step 4:
Now it’s time to work through each pile methodically. Get rid of anything that can be recycled or shredded, and pull out any items that need to be ‘actioned’. By the end you should (hopefully) have a much smaller pile.
Step 5:
Put anything that needs to be actioned into the letter tray, which will sit on top of the filing cabinet. Whenever you have a free half hour in the future, you can come to this tray and start working through it.
Step 6:
Sort the remaining papers into date order, and place them into one of the drawers in the filing cabinet. Clearly label the contents of that drawer on the front of the filing cabinet.
You now have a very clear system for paperwork as it enters your house. It either gets filed straight away into the correct drawer, or goes into the ‘action’ tray to be dealt with. Once a drawer starts to get full, go to the bottom of the drawer (where the oldest documents are) and review whether you still need them.
If there are any documents you believe you really need to hold onto (a quick Google should help with this) then you could consider having an archive box for old paperwork, which you can keep in a loft or cupboard.
Top tips
1. Be realistic about how long this will take you. If you have a big stack of paperwork built up, it could take a number of sessions over several days to sort everything. It’s much better that you take your time and have breaks than to simply panic and give up because you attempt to do too much at once.
2. Ideally, set aside an undisturbed area to sort your paperwork, so you can take a break when you need to and come back to it without everything having been moved. A dining room table is great, for example.
3. Don’t over-complicate the system by adding in confusing colour coding or subcategories. It’ll all get too much to remember.
4. Remember if you want to assign a drawer for passports, spare keys and so on then it is worth investing in lockable drawers for security purposes.
5. If you have the space, then wait until you’ve sorted all the paperwork before buying the drawers. That way you know exactly what size filing cabinet to buy (you can buy more than one if necessary!)
From: Good Housekeeping UK
PHOTO: iStock/Geber86
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