Many homes struggle with the chaos of everyday life, especially with the difficulty of finding what item of paper you need when you need it. I have created a home files system that has been extremely easy to implement and beneficial to our overall home management and organization. It is based on both color-coding and alphabetizing. I will lay out how we have organized and color-coded our personal files, but please amend it to fit your home and lifestyle as needed.
We have a four-drawer filing cabinet, but for our home files, we use only one. (You might use a desk drawer fitted for hanging files or a portable file box, available at most office supply stores.) I purchased a box of multi-colored hanging files from an office supply store, containing the colors red, orange, yellow, green, and blue. There are other colors available in individual boxes, if needed. I then decided what five main areas of our home life needed organization in our home and assigned each of them one of the five colors.
In our home files, we use red for important documents, such as auto info and maintenance, credit reports, all insurance plans, pay stubs, retirement plan, and one file for birth certificates, marriage certificate, social security information, passports, and other related documents. I created a separate red file folder and tab label for each “red” category. There are separate files for each car, each insurance plan, and each of our pay stubs. The file with certificates and identification documents is labeled “IMPORTANT” so I can see it at an immediate glance and be able to grab it quickly in case of an emergency. I assigned the yellow file folders to all household and collective family items. These include computer information, purchasing advertisements and comparisons, instruction manuals and warranties (split up by large appliances, small appliances, electronics, and tools), moving, and traveling. Our bills and expenses are assigned a green folder and label tab. There is one folder folder for each bill we pay through the year, including all separate utilities, insurances, school tuitions, and medical. I also created a green folder for our bank statements. Lastly, I knew it would be important for each person in our home to have their own set of easily identifiable files. Since there is currently only myself and my husband, I assigned orange to my husband and blue to myself. When we have children, I will purchase other colored file folders for each of them for school stuff and artwork. We have each created file folders in our respective colors for ideas and projects lists, magazine articles, lesson plans we have created, alumni information, class notes, and other school or work stuff.
After creating each file, I arranged the tabs into one of the five non-overlapping positions. All red tabs go in the first slot, orange tabs in the second slot, yellow in the third and so on. This helps unify the colored categories at a glance into the file drawer. Then, I commenced to place the file folders into the one file drawer. I put them in alphabetical order, regardless of category or color. My husband was skeptical at first about being able to easily find the bills folders, but he found that because all of the green tabs were in a row throughout the drawer, it was much easier to locate them than if the green folders were isolated from the other colors and the tabs alternating slots. Plus, because the green folders have other folders dispersed amongst them because of the alphabetizing, the tabs are spread apart enough to make finding one bill very effortless. And all of the bills have alphabetical tabs all in a row.
It has made a world of difference to our home organization and managing paper clutter to have all of our home and personal files in one place, one drawer, to have them color-coded by category, and to have everything alphabetized for easy access. Every piece of paper has a home or a home (file) can be easily and quickly created for it. I always keep extra folders and tabs on hand for just such a need. Organization is key to an efficient home, and it aids us in spending more time on the things we want to in life because we spend less time looking for those elusive pieces of paper.
