Organizing, papers and digital

[Ladygoldenhair]

I need a system. I spent an entire day shredding, collecting and stacking.

Now I need a way to scan, file folders or know which to put where.
Many are legal documents, tax returns, insurance policies, and medical records.

*I have an old laptop, and IPad/iPhone that scan, also a really good portable hand scanner and one on my printer.
*Large file cabinet downstairs.
*large amounts of photograph SD cards, flash drives, blank DVDs and a 1-T byte external. storage

I have work photos that need to be kept
Vacation photos that only a selection will be printed to scrapbooks.

Any ideas?

Oh, I had a subscription to Internet storage too.

 

[Shelly F - Ohio]

I have a word doc that has - taxes, medical, insurance ect on it. In Jan I print off the labels and put them on folder. In my kitchen by the trash can I have a basket where I keep these folder. As I get the mail daily I take it over sort through it and toss the junk mail file the rest.

 

[puffkin]

I just became treasurer of the pool. I got handed a HUGE box of files, accordion folders, loose folders, binders, etc of financial records. We don't like to keep financial stuff at the pool because of security issues and I don't really have the space for it.

My plan is to use a rubbermaid filing bin to store one years worth of paperwork. There are some legal documents, insurance paperwork, etc that I should be able to fit in 2 binders. THe rest of the stuff I am going to scan by year and type onto my desktop at work (we have a big copy machine/scanner to it should go fast). Then I bought thumb drives that I plan on transferring everything off to. 1 thumb drive per year, and then a seperate thumb drive for taxes and one for payroll data. I am going to store the thumb drives in the safe deposit box the pool owns at the bank. Everything will be shredded once I scan it in. So basically I will have 2 years of paperwork (current year and prior) and then all the prior year documentation scanned on thumb drives.

 

[MomToOne]

First of all, figure out the documents you need or want to keep the originals on - some legal documents you need to do that, and some documents like much of my daughter's original adoption paperwork I just want to keep originals of. For those, I keep a system of file folders in some "pretty" wicker file folder storage boxes I found at Pier 1 many years ago - I just have them stacked in a walk-in closet. REALLY sensitive documents - my will and a certified copy of my daughter's final adoption decree for example - are stored in a safe deposit box at the bank.

For anything I don't need originals of and I can just keep a copy (tax returns, etc.) I scan them into PDF format - or store them off if I originally got them electronically - and save them out in a set of Google Drive folders. That way I can access them from any of my computers or even my cell phone. I figure if the house ever goes up in flames and is a total loss - including all computers - I'll still be able to quickly access them. You can get 15GB of storage free on Google Drive, but because I keep so much stuff there, I recently upgraded to 100GB for just $1.99 a month. I sometimes organize things by year, but not always, sometimes I do it by topic - it really just depends on the specific types of documents being kept. For example, I like to keep warranties for electronics together in one folder - if I need to find it, trying to remember the year I bought something can be a nightmare.

I am slowly in the process of uploading all of my pictures to Google Drive as well (that's what actually sent me over the 15GB mark and required me to buy more storage). Those I try to organize in a series of sub-folders named to identify the event and date, for example "201402 DD14 Birthday Party". If you put the date in YYYYMMDD or YYYYMM format at the beginning of the folder name, it's easy to sort things by date.

 

[Luvstotravel]

I have a laminator, and so far I'm using it for recipes. When I want to print one from my Pinterest board, I either like the recipe and then laminate it to keep in a binder, or I toss it, and delete it.