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Last updated on November 9th, 2022 at 10:44 pm
Let me guess …you have an entire filing cabinet full of paper that you haven’t opened in about a year. Or a dozen filing boxes in the garage that you’re not sure if you should hang on to or not. You need to start organizing paper and making some space, but it’s hard to know what to keep!
I’m not immune to this situation either. But during the last couple of years, I’ve been working really hard to remove any unneeded items from our home, including unnecessary papers. I’ve learned that the best way to figure out what should stay and what should go is to create a set of guidelines.
If you’re looking to start organizing paper but you’re having a hard time really paring it down, I have a set of guidelines you can use as you sort through your files.
Here are 4 questions your papers to use when organizing paper.
Can this be replaced by making a phone call or an online request?
This first guiding question is for those papers you use once but feel like for some reason you should hang on to them because they seem so official.
Here’s what I mean.
I remember getting to the end of the year with a fat file of credit card statements. I only referred to them on the day I checked the transactions and paid the bill. Then they’d just go into a file and sit there until I purged the papers. Once I realized this, I canceled the paper statements and now I check everything online.
If I need statements from any of the previous years, it’s easy enough to send a request to the credit card company.
So, if you still have access to the information, even if you have to make a phone call, you may not need to hang on to those papers.
Can I get in legal or financial trouble for not keeping this?
You probably know what this stuff is. Tax returns, mortgage papers, perhaps even receipts if you own a small business. These are the kinds of papers that if you’re not absolutely sure, you should check with a CPA.
Is this the most current information?
For some reason, my insurance company keeps screwing up my auto policy. Every time they change it, I get a new document that says, “Revised Policy” along with the date. It seems pointless to save old policies that aren’t valid. All I need is the most recent, relevant information.
Is it worth my time and space to store this paper?
Not too long ago I did my annual paper purge. I pulled out files that belong to my husband with papers he insisted on keeping a few years ago. He sorted through them and found that a lot of it wasn’t even worth hanging on to anymore.
The thing about this question is that something that once seemed worth it to keep may not be a couple of years from now. Sometimes you have to revisit those papers again and again before you realize you can let it go.
Sometimes you deal with papers that don’t have much meaning, but you received them and you think you should store them. If you’re never going to use them again, and they don’t have anything to do with the previous 3 questions, let it go.
Before you start organizing paper make sure it’s worth keeping using these 4 questions:
- Can this be replaced by making a phone call or an online request?
- Can I get in legal or financial trouble for not keeping this?
- Is this the most current information?
- Is it worth my time (and real estate) to keep this paper?
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