Keep Thou My Feet

My latest big project has been to overhaul our filing cabinet. Having a baby always seems to involve a million bills and explanations of benefits, and I was scared to put them in a file because I wasn't sure if I'd be able to find them again. Our filing system used to work, but things are a little more complicated now and I realized that it was time to fix things, although I wasn't sure where to start.

So of course I got on Pinterest and found this post about organizing your filing system. It was just what I was looking for. It took me about a week and a half to get through the entire filing cabinet, but now it's finally done. I feel like a huge weight has been taken off of my shoulders because now I know where to find everything and I got rid of a ton of papers that we don't need anymore. It was mostly fun, actually.

I used the blogger's idea for color-coding, except that I changed the colors and categories some, based on what we needed. Here's how I broke it down:

Brown-ish green: Medical. We already had a ton of these folders and I knew that we would need a lot for all of the subcategories for medicine. Did I mention having a baby involves a lot of paper? I think this was the category that needed the most work. We used to be able to get by with a single folder for medical stuff, but now all the different insurance policies, immunizations, doctor printouts, prescriptions, bills, and explanations of benefits need their own folders if we're ever going to be able to find things.

Yellow: School. Everyone in school has their own folder, and Ryan has different folders for BYU and UNC.

Blue: Important Documents (everyone has their own folder) and Miscellaneous.

Red: Income (taxes, pay stubs, etc.)

Purple: Banking/credit cards. We don't really need that many folders for this category because most stuff is saved electronically now.

Green: Auto, housing, and warranties/manuals (separated into folders for electronics, appliances, and furniture/miscellaneous).

The one problem I still have is where to put things that I still need to do like forms.