Hello friends! I am going to let you know how I set up an easy, cheap, and simple system to control all the incoming and outgoing paper clutter in our household once and for all. I know paper flow is a constant uphill battle that takes every day and sometimes every hour attention to keep it under control it seems. I have set up 3 key elements to this system and each is just as important as the next to keep our counter tops clear and my mind at peace so I do not have to look at stacks of paper everywhere or search endlessly for that one piece of paper that “I swear I just saw it the other day!” The first element is a standard file cabinet system. I bought this little stand that fits perfectly inside this cabinet on Amazon for about $10. I knew when we did our recent kitchen remodel that I needed some sort of filing system in my desk area but did not want to look at those unsightly metal filing cabinets sitting under my desk so this is a perfect fit! This is not something I access daily but I would say a couple times a week. This system holds documents like: previous utility bills, mortgage statements, vehicle repair records, check stubs, credit card statements, and my dental assisting continuing education records. Basically papers that I don’t need in the near future but I feel like we should hold onto for a certain period of time. Periodically, I will go through and shred the papers I don’t feel serve a purpose for us any longer. I have color coded the different categories to make it a little easier on the eye to quickly search what I am looking for. Yellow is bills/statements, red is papers that have to do with income, and green is basically everything else. In the future, I will probably add more colors to break down the categories a little more, but for right now this works just great for us!
The next element is binders. I cannot say this enough how binders were a real game changer for me in controlling our paper clutter! They are so easy to grab and throw in my bag if it is something I need to travel with or move to a different part of the house. If anyone asks me the first and easiest way to start with controlling paper clutter, it would definitely be with binders. They are basically as inexpensive or expensive as you want to spend. You can make them as fancy or as simple as you want. Personally I like a simpler and to the point approach but if you want fancy dancy labels then hey! go for it! I decided to keep it simple and stick with only a few colors to keep this cupboard easy on the eye. You will learn my friends I like things simple, neutral, but classic. The black binders hold things that will probably never be thrown out or shredded but we need to access regularly. These binder titles are: House Manuals, Electronic Manuals, Miscellaneous Manuals, Cecil, Garden, and 401K. The house manual binder keeps large appliance manuals and purchase agreements such as: kitchen appliances, furniture purchases, floor paperwork, and fireplace manuals. The previous homeowners were extremely kind to leave these types of documents behind for us. Apparently the previous owners had a leak under the dishwasher that seemed to be an ongoing issue for them and they left all that paperwork behind. This was extremely helpful to know about during our kitchen remodel. If you are planning to sell your house do the next homeowners a favor and leave these type of manuals and paperwork behind for them (if you are wondering, yes we extended this courtesy to the folks that purchased our previous house). The next binder is our electronic binder. This is pretty self-explanatory, any sort of electronic device the manual goes right into this big guy. The miscellaneous manual binder is pretty much anything else I don’t feel fits into either of the 2 previous categories. Cecil’s (our English Bulldog) binder is any documentation or records that we have on him. This is extremely helpful to have in a binder. Any time he has a vet appointment or starts at a new daycare or boarding facility I can just grab this binder to throw in his bag and any documentation that they might need or past visits that they might need to know about are right there. We can easily access is past vaccine records and find out which ones he is currently due for. I have also typed up first aid for dogs and a list of medicines that are ok for dogs should we need it in an emergency. I will show more in detail about what is all included in this binder in a later post when I show all the organization systems I have in place for Cecil. The garden binder is where I like to keep track of anything garden related. I keep seed packets of things we have currently in the garden and those little tabs that come with flowers that explain how to care for them. In the future I would like to include a log and note section to keep notes and document from year to year how the garden turned out. I had high hopes of this happening this year but I just never got around to it. If you have any ideas send them my way! The last binder is pretty self-explanatory. Any paperwork and documentation that deals with either of our 401K’s goes right into this binder. It is pretty simple, I just have it split up by employer.
The blue colored binders are anything that I access on a daily or weekly basis. These binders are: Recipes, Home Management, Receipts, and Budget. The largest binder with this section is recipes. I have a recipe box that holds tried and true family recipes that I know exactly what they are when I first see the title. The recipes in this binder are ones that I feel like I need a picture to see what it is before I will make it. I love sifting through this pretty binder and seeing all the yummy looking pictures while planning my meals for the week. They are ones where I probably don’t recognize the title bit I definitely recognize the picture when I see it. See the difference? However, I have not tried every single recipe in this binder but I probably will in the near future if I haven’t already. The home management binder is a hodge podge of random things. It has homemade cleaning recipes, family member’s birthdays and anniversaries, home maintenance log, and monthly cleaning tasks. I will do a separate post on this binder in the future also. The receipt binder is just what it says. Receipts. I don’t keep every receipt from every purchase but if there is any chance the item will need to be returned I keep the receipt. The binder that I definitely by far use the most is the budget binder. I access this binder daily if not a couple times a day. This holds all the bills to pay, receipts that have yet to be entered into our spending budget for the month, check book log, and anything that is needed to pay a bill. Lastly, my Blog binder is orange. I chose to go with a different color for this binder so it would really stand out in the cupboard or wherever it is currently being stored. To be honest this binder is usually on the coffee table or my night stand so it wasn’t pertinent that this be the same color as the others.
The third and final piece to the paper clutter control puzzle is a file system on top of the desk. I purchased this pretty inexpensive file system from Ikea (INSER LINK) It is made to screw into a wall but I used 2 3M adhesive hooks to attach it to the side of our refrigerator. This file system holds a lot of papers that are in sort of a limbo situation. These categories are: To Do, Pending, Skylar, and Extra Papers. I have these darling folder sets in each file that I found for a buck in the Target dollar section. (I just love that section! I always find something in there!) The To Do file is basically anything that I need to do in the near future like phone calls to make or documents to further look into but I don’t have time at the moment the paper comes into the house. Pending are papers that I have already completed the task that was necessary but still need to wait until the situation resolves itself. An example would be a wrong charge on a bill that I needed to make a phone call on but need to wait until the next bill cycle to make sure the issue is resolved. The file labeled Skylar is anything that Skylar needs to look at or make a phone call on. At the end of the month I will put all the budget sheets from that month in his file and he will enter the spending for that month into our spreadsheet. The extra sheet file contains sheets that I have made several copies of and need to grab one out weekly or monthly. My blood sugar tracker sheets are kept in this file in a folder. I also keep a folder of original sheets or master copies that I can just make a copy of instead of trying to locate where I found the original and printing it off.
Well there you have it! That is the system that has done wonders for us to control incoming and outgoing papers. I hope this post helps or inspires you to start a system of your own that might work for your family. Hopefully you can take some or all of these ideas and control that paper clutter once and for all!! -Krisa