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Home Office Files – Filing Tips
Your 6 month old dishwasher is already broken…do you know where to find the receipt and warranty information?
It's time to sell your old car, and the buyer would like to see the service records…do you panic or hand the buyer a nice, neat file folder?
If situations like these cause you to fumble frantically through mounds of papers on your desk, it's time for a home office overhaul starting with your home office files!
Let's get rid of the piles & make files! Ready for some filing tips?
The simple part is gathering your supplies and labeling your files with categories & subcategories! I've put together a list of suggested filing categories & subcategories to get you started…you may need more or less, depending on your situation.
- Gather your supplies
- file cabinet
- hanging file folders with labels for categories
- file folders with labels for subcategories
Create your categories and subcategories. Label the hanging folders with the filing categories, and label the file folders with the subcategories.
- Financial
- bills (gather them in this folder & pay twice a month)
- bank statements (unless they are online)
- brokerage statements
- credit card information
- loan papers
- House
- closing papers
- home repairs & home improvements
- Auto
- A separate folder for each car…this is where all service receipts will go!
- Insurance
- auto
- disability
- flood
- health
- home
- life
- Tax
- current folder (collect this year's receipts, donation receipts & other tax papers)
- folder for each year with the completed tax return
- Warranty
- appliances (staple receipts to instruction books)
- electronics (staple receipts to instruction books)
- lawn & garden (staple receipts to instruction books)
- toys (staple receipts to instruction books)
- miscellaneous (staple receipts to instruction books)
Ready for the hard part?
It's time to tackle your piles and fill your files!
The good news is that when your dishwasher breaks, you'll know exactly where to find the warranty information! What good is a warranty if you can't find it?
Remember…time is money, so organize your life & SAVE!
A really helpful addition would be to also include how LONG each file (of each type) is to be kept, thereby further reducing the number (quantity) of files taking up space in my file cabinet. Part of my current problem is that I save EVERYTHING!
Great suggestion! I actually look through my files at the first of every year and purge! For example…I look through my warranty files and get rid of warranties & instruction booklets for any items we not longer own. Likewise, we keep our tax returns for 7 years…so at the start of the year, another ones goes. It’s an annual ritual that I actually enjoy because I refuse to have more than one file cabinet. Rainy day project???
I really need to do this. I did it when we moved into our apartment, but it’s fallen wayward in the past year.