How to Plan Out Your File Drawer Organization

Although it is basically unavoidable, I dear a ataxia free workspace.  As someone who is easily distracted, having piles of papers and accessories makes me twitchy.  So yeah, my desk typically looks pretty snazzy.... the secret lies within the nearby drawers!

As in my dirty fiddling secret.  It is like I basically use my arm to dive my clutter right into the drawers of my filing cabinet tucked below my desk-bound.

Run into?!

I really actually love the filing cabinet itself... I purchased it final twelvemonth at CB2.  After bringing home two different Goodwill options to makeover, I wasn't finding that they were offing the types of storage that I was after, and they were not smooth to open and shut.  When I was window shopping at CB2, the filing chiffonier defenseless my eye and landed right into the trunk of my car.  It was a winner!

A winner at concealing my ataxia in a very unorganized way.  Which was totally my fault.  I just have not taken the time to give this beauty the attention she deserves.  Until today.

A few weeks ago quarterly taxes were due and I searched loftier and low for those statement stubs.  I looked in binders, planners, and through the catch-all files that lived in this filing cabinet.  After over an hour of searching and having a small meltdown, I establish only what I needed.  And moved the filing chiffonier clean-out high on my priority listing.

Here is what I started out with.

The acme drawer held random files and a lot of clutter.  The second drawer did the aforementioned.  The tertiary drawer was the offset to my file organization from many months ago, even so, because nothing e'er was truly sorted or labeled, every concluding paper that I filed landed in a big "to file" file in the back of the drawer.  Nice.

This was Non a quick procedure.  I had a lot of papers to get through likewise equally clutter to sort downward and organize.  Thank you Netflix, you saved the twenty-four hours once again.

As always, I emptied out every last drawer to see what I was working with and to but become big or go home.

I started with the fun accompaniment drawer stuff, I would rather organize items than boring papers any solar day...  Knowing I had a lot of small items that needed to exist corralled within the meridian two drawers, I hunted downwards box lids, DIY paper boxes, jewelry boxes, empty note card boxes, etc... anything that could act as a drawer divider.

I purged down items that no longer needed to exist in the drawer, put other items back where they truly belonged and the rest concluded upwardly nice and groovy in the file cabinet drawers.  I think I just might leave this one open up all day, every day....

And drawer number two:

Not world shattering stuff but FAR better nonetheless!

So information technology happened.  I sorted and sorted and sorted papers some more than.  Blah.  Why can't bank statements be printed on pretty pink newspaper and why aren't life insurance documents washed with rainbow borders of happiness?  Someone make that happen m'kay?

I blurred out the documents, but you can still take a peek at the color coding system I used.  I purchased file folders from The Container Store in three colors, blue, pinkish and green.  I used pink for my business files {of course}, blue for personal files and green for financial/of import files.

I already had hanging folders inside of the cabinet which came with tabbed labels {these from Amazon}.  I adopt labeling the hanging folder over the individual folders because it stands up higher and is easier to read.  The hanging files were Pendaflex brand and a simple Google search brought up a label template for me to download into Microsoft Word to edit.  I printed the labels using matching colors to the file folders.  Pretty great how that works!

In one case cutting downwards to size, they fit perfectly into the plastic label holders.

I apply my business files much more frequently than our personal files {many of our personal statements end upwardly in our budget folder}, then I placed them within the filing cabinet accordingly.

Once the hanging files were labeled, I popped all of the individual files inside and filled upwards the drawer.

I really didn't think it would be possible, but I got a little giddy inside about how the organized files turned out.  Totally worth the fourth dimension information technology took to touch every last piece of paper.

The outside of the cabinet received a small splash of color with some more printed labels popped into my favorite adhesive label holders.

And a final celebratory later photo.  Be however my happy middle!

Now that it is washed, I have a feeling it will increase the amount of grinning I am doing while working at my desk-bound.  And when I need to notice side by side quarter's tax filing voucher!

Accept you recently tackled something you have been dreading for a long period of time?  Was information technology as bad as you idea information technology would  be?

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Source: http://www.iheartorganizing.com/2014/09/filing-cabinet-organization.html