It seems it’s become a regular occurrence around here that I only do my filing once a year. It was never a “thing” because my personal policy was to do the filing when it started annoying me, and then it seemed it annoyed me about once a year.
Aren’t you glad I started a new piece of card?
This is what I started with – about 8 cm of paper
Use post-it notes for your piles of paper as you start sorting
I very nearly ran out of space
Closer view of the piles…
it never hurts to have something nice to look at 🙂 (a collage I created with iphone photos from when I worked in the CBD)
this was the pile of papers to be filed – really nothing much…
all of this got tossed – of course, this is my favourite part of “filing”
glorious – paper for the bin! (yes, I shredded it)
The key is don’t think you need to file everything, but to ask yourself, what will I not be able to find quicker than looking in a file.
E.g. Proof of payments…. it is quicker for me to log onto my internet banking, click on payments, the beneficiary’s name and check the dates than to haul out the file and look for the piece of paper, or if it happened before I’ve done my filing, to look through a pile of paper to find said receipt.
So I don’t keep it.
Or what will be a huge hassle to get if I can’t find it?
I probably shouldn’t admit this but my computer autoarchived my tax return and I needed a copy. I hadn’t printed it out at the time but a quick email to my tax guy, and I had a new emailed copy (which I since saved in My Documents) within the hour.
Which means… I don’t have to file it.
Happy days! 🙂
Again and again I learnt that it always feels like it’s going to be much worse than it is, but never ever takes longer than an hour to sort out.And that was with me taking pictures as I worked 🙂
When was the last time you did your filing?
Do you need to do your monthly or annual filing this weekend?
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