Filing. I used to hate it. Took ages, and often ended up with piles of papers everywhere.
I'd like to offer you a solution I learned from my parents: stratigraphic filing.
In these days of online accounts, etc, I contend there are only 2 categories of stuff to file:
- tax related things for your tax return
- everything else, none of which you will probably ever need again, but want or have to keep hold of just in case.
The answer is to file according to date. Take a wire coat hanger. Reshape it to form a roughly 1 foot spike, with a triangle of wire as a base. As stuff arrives that needs filing, just spike it. As long as you know the approximate date of something you need in future, a quick search will find it. Not that I've had to do that more than once a year.
Else, just spike every day or so, and when it's full put a blank piece of paper on last, write date range, fold over the last 2 or 3 inches of wire, and stick in the attic. Then repeat.
Put tax return stuff somewhere else, like a shoe box. You'll only need that once a year, and only a low % is tax related anyhow.
It makes filing fast, fun, and efficient.
Ie, Mustachian!
