do you keep your home office paperwork organized? or do you chuck it?

do you keep your stuff neatly organized in a filing cabinet or do you have piles of stuff scattered around?
what is your filing system?

do you file and keep all your monthly statements? like your cable bill, credit card bill, bank stuff? etc

do you organize it by month or category?
how long do you keep it?

Re: do you keep your home office paperwork organized? or do you chuck it?

I use the circular file & the shredder for most items. I have files for anything that involves taxes, major purchases, warranties, etc.

Re: do you keep your home office paperwork organized? or do you chuck it?

I am neurotically organized and I purge into banker's boxes annually after I do my taxes. I am such a dork.

Re: do you keep your home office paperwork organized? or do you chuck it?

We have a file drawer in our office desk that has folders and tabs for all of our bills. We keep about a year of bills, statements and important receipts then do a big clean out every once in a while when the drawer gets full and chuck the old stuff.

ETA: To answer your other question... we keep it organized by company (Amex, Jeep, Geico, etc) and put the newest statements/bills in the front of each folder.

Message edited 9/24/2008 11:48:24 AM.

Re: do you keep your home office paperwork organized? or do you chuck it?

Re: do you keep your home office paperwork organized? or do you chuck it?

I have a lovely file cabinet, and you would think I'm organized, but I literally THROW the bills in there in a giant mess. Every now and again I empty it into a garbage bag and throw it into the garage.

Re: do you keep your home office paperwork organized? or do you chuck it?

We have an accordian file that has something like 26 tabs and each one is labeled for each bill (Time Warner, Citibank, Con Edison, MBNA Visa, Victorias Secret, etc). Once we pay a bill, we file it in the accordian file.

We just started this system this year, but we plan on keeping just 1 year's worth of bills.

Since we usually don't file right away, we have one of those "gift" bags next to the accordian file that we put the bills into that are ready to be filed so they're not all piled on the table or whatever and mixed in with the "to be paid" stuff. Then we just file it when we have time. We shred anything that doesn't have to be filed.

Re: do you keep your home office paperwork organized? or do you chuck it?

we are just starting to organize all of our paperwork into a filing system.

now that we have a baby on the way, and have made major purchases ( a new car) and my dh's own business, we need to keep on top of the paper trail....

i think i will organize according to category... and keep everything for a year and then once the year is up, clear it all out and put everything in a 2008 folder...

Re: do you keep your home office paperwork organized? or do you chuck it?

we have online statements, so we don't retain those bills... too much paper. we just keep the important docs (tax returns, insurance policies....) in a well-organized file cabinet. the second the policy is renewed, the prior years is pitched.

we live in a small place, so we have to selectively file stuff

Re: do you keep your home office paperwork organized? or do you chuck it?

i literally bought a filing cabinet a while ago.. and JUST filed everything away neatly! so organized!
i cant believed how much garbage we had .. shredded alot..