Paperwork can be a huge pain, but it doesn’t have to be. With the right tips and tricks, you can turn your pile of paperwork in a chaotic mess into an organized collection of information that you actually use. Here are some tips to organize your home office paperwork.
Make Sure You Need It
The first step to organizing paperwork at home is deciding whether or not you need it. Do you really need every last receipt from the last five years? If it’s not important, get rid of it.
Even if you think that someday you will find value in the paperwork, don’t keep it. Put items into one of these three piles:
- Dispose of immediately
- File for future reference
- Save until needed
Organize Paperwork For Each Area of Your Life
It’s important to keep your paperwork in one place. Otherwise you’ll end up with a jumbled mess of documents that are difficult to find when you need them.
You should also keep bills, receipts and warranties in separate locations from your documents. If a bill has a payment due date on it, then it should be kept somewhere other than in the document storage container where the actual document is stored. This way if an important bill comes through the mail or in an email, you will know right away where to put it!
Organize By Due Date or Type
Type of paperwork
It’s important to organize your papers according to the type of paper. If you have medical bills and receipts that are due soon, you might want to create a stack for those items and keep them separate from other types of paperwork.
Due dates
You should also organize your papers by their due date as well as by their type. If there are any upcoming bills that need paying right away or any other documents with specific deadlines (such as tax returns or car insurance claims), then it’s important that you keep those papers together so they’re easy to find when the time comes for them to be completed or turned in at their respective offices.
Save Digitally When Possible
If you’re not already doing so, start saving all your documents digitally. This will make them easier to share and access and will eliminate the need for paper altogether. If you’re not sure where to begin, check out our [Digital Archive](https://www.scanvault.com/blog/how-to-organize-paperwork) article for tips on how to organize paperless documents online.
Conclusion
Organizing paperwork is a tedious task, but it’s one that you have to do if you want to stay organized. Organize your papers by type as much as possible so that you can quickly see what needs attention and what doesn’t. If there are still some things that need attention but aren’t urgent enough to worry about immediately, then save them digitally so they won’t take up space in your home or office!