Organizing Your Files In Binders

After I got married, the amount of paperwork in my life started to doubled.  Marriage license.  Tax returns.  Car titles.  Then we bought a house and the paperwork grew even more.  House deed.  Mortgage loan information.  And then there's that drawer full of owner's manuals to every appliance we've ever purchased or received as a gift.

I originally had everything split into file folders and placed in one of those large plastic milk crates, but the soon proved to be a poor choice.  The folders would fall over, we'd get new paperwork and throw it on top.  Then we couldn't find anything when we needed it.  It was a huge mess.

After I graduated college I had two large binders leftover that I just couldn't bear to get rid of.  I was determined to find a way to reuse them.  Light bulb moment.  Since the binders had done a good job of keeping my school work organized, they should be a good place to store all my files, right?

I started with my huge mess of papers and began sorting through everything.  Drew helped and soon we were able to purge anything we didn't need.  I'm kind of a hoarder, so it helped to have him saying, "No, we do not need insert useless piece of junk here."

After we purged unnecessary files, I sorted them into categories that made sense to me.  My categories were:

• Dexter & Daphne
• vet papers
• Important Documents
• Drew
• Social security cards, birth certificates 
• Nichole
• Social security cards, birth certificates, name change documents
• Marriage
• marriage license
• Football tickets
• Ole Miss Athletics Foundation membership info
• Drew's Card
• Title
• Insurance Policy
• My Car
• Insurance
• Financing Info
• Sirius XM Radio info
• My Job
• Offer letter, Contract
• Benefits Enrollment Info & Spare Cards
• Medical, Prescription, and Vision Insurance info
• Plan Description
• Retirement
• Life & AD&D Info
• Drew's Job
• Similar Categories to Above

Everything was added to the binder like this:

• file folder
• heavy weight sheet protector
• details on what is inside the sheet protector

Maybe some pictures will help it make sense.

 The first bullet is written on a file folder.  The file folder is hole-punched and added to the binder.

Anything falling under the "Important Documents" bullet, are placed into sheet protectors and placed after the file folder.  I just used a sticky Avery label and a sharpie to label the sheet protectors.

All of those user manuals you have stuffed in a drawer, those are in a different binder.  I chose not to go with labels on the sheet protectors in this binder since it's pretty obvious what's in them.

I ended up purchasing two more binders, since the blue one was getting full.  In one of the new binders I have all of our tax returns.  Each year is placed in a sheet protectors with a date label on the front.  The other binder houses all of the paperwork for our house.  Again, everything is separated into sheet protectors and labels placed on the front letting you know what's inside.

Now that I've been living with this system for a while what do I think?

I love it!

When I need to locate something, I know exactly which binder to go through.  It's easy to flip to the correct "folder" and the flip through the folder to see what "sheet protector" I need.  The labels make it easy to quickly see what's inside.

Anytime something new comes in that needs to be filed, all I have to do is grab a sheet protector and a label and add in to the correct folder.

How do you file your paperwork?  Have you tried the binder organization system?  If so, what did you think?  I'd love to hear about it!  Leave a comment below.