How to Organize Paper Part 2: How to Categorize Paperwork

If you read part 1 of this paper organizing series, you should have a work area set up with three designated piles: keep, recycle, shred. In this post, let’s go deeper into how to categorize the paperwork in the “keep” pile.

Sometimes it’s easy to decide what to toss, but much harder to know whether you should actually keep something.

So let’s talk about categories of what to “keep.” Show those papers who’s boss and by sorting them into 3 different categories.

01. Actionable Paperwork

These are the papers that have a task tied to them that need to be done within a specified amount of time. These papers should be kept in your “action file,” “main paper hub,” or “Sunday Basket.”

I talked more about an actionable paper system in this post, but the main point is just to have a home for all those paper that are timely. Here’s how you can sort them:

• Bills to pay
• Forms to complete
• To file
• Current month’s receipts
• Calendar items (postcard appointment reminders, field trip reminders)
• Forward (give to someone else)

02. Household management

These are the papers you need to use often to know everyone’s schedules, who to contact for what, planning, you name it. This is your hub for all the information that you need for day-to-day life.

There are a lot of examples of binders for this sort of thing, but I’ve been working on digitizing most of this stuff, which I’ll talk about in a later post.

• Budget planner
• Emergency contact info (and the Babysitter Kit)
• General contact info
• Checklists
• Meal Planning Master List
• School schedules
• Activities schedule
• Clubs
• Church
• Local events
• Household maintenance paperwork
  • Contractor contacts
  • Contracts
  • Major appliance receipts and warranties
  • Landscaping
  • Home decor
  • Home improvement projects

03. Long-term Reference

I think the majority of the paperwork we have are probably the long-term papers. This is the category that starts to look a little muddy because we really don’t know if we can toss that bill, or if we might “need that later.”

So let’s refer back to the paper decluttering questions:

1. Can this be replaced by making a phone call or an online request?
2. Can I get in legal or financial trouble for not keeping this?
3. Is this the most current information?
4. Is it worth my time and real estate to keep this paper?

There will probably end up being a lot of paper to hand on, and there are different options to store them. For all of these papers, I use a filing cabinet like this one and a fire-safe file box like this one. And like the actionable paper hub, I use hanging file folders and classic manila folders.

Okay, so now, let’s categorize these babies:

• Medical
  • Records
  • History
  • Insurance
  • Bills
  • FSA/HSA
• Financial
  • Taxes
  • Bank accounts
  • Life Insurance
  • Retirement/investment accounts
  • Income (pay stubs)
  • Expenses
• Personal
  • Vital documents (birth certificates, marriage certificates, baptism records, etc)
  • Education
  • Employment (awards, resumes, professional memberships)
• Auto
  • Loans/Leases
  • Titles
  • Insurance
  • Maintenance
• Property
  • Mortgage/real estate documents
  • Property Insurance
  • Trust documents
• Lifestyle
  • Hobbies
  • Clubs
  • Associations
  • Travel
  • Memories
  • Family history

You may have other categories that might be tied to some of these areas. The ones listed here are really just suggestions – you do what works for you.

I call it tweaking a system.

Categorize the paperwork

So now you can sort those keep papers into 3 different categories: actionable, home management, long-term reference. It’s going to take some time, but stick with the plan of working on it during your scheduled session time while binge-watching Netflix 🙂

Did you miss the other parts of the series? Check them out here:

How to Organize Paper Part 1: Getting Started by Sorting