Oh my gosh, I am inspired just reading your words! Wow, what a big task and a great way to approach it. That's especially nice that you found a couple of gift cards for your effort :^)

You're going to burn up at least one shredder before this is done!

Isn't it amazing how paperwork builds up? Where I find I make the mistake is in keeping paperwork that should be short term keepers, but find them years later. It's just a matter that it hasn't been gone through in that long.

Anyway, you've inspired me to go find a pile of paper clutter to shred.

Keep it up and keep us updated too!

And a reminder that some businesses have shredding services which are a boon when purging on a large scale. Thank you Staples for making that part of my life easier :-)

Wow again! Really great job! I LOVE that you shared some pictures of your work space, as well as your make-shift work space :^p Looks great!

Are your hands dry from handling all that paper? Oh, that's what always gets me.

I always think I've got paper controlled and confined to certain areas, but you are right, it finds its way into every little nook and cranny. I've got to get back to going through DD's school work again. It sounds like you have/had a lot of that type of paper clutter too? It seems like the further we get from when she did the paperwork, the less meaning it has. Going through papers 2-3 years later, it's easier to pick out the good, personal pieces, versus the papers that could have been done by any kid in the class.

One thing I started doing a few years ago, but admittedly not to the extent it should be, is to file some things in with taxes (so they are shredded and gone at the same point), and others with the CC statements that we keep for 2 years. That helps having them in a "shred-me" deadline folder-- but again, other papers sneak in elsewhere.

Lots more to go, gardenwebcupofkindness? It sounds like you had much more to work through?

Hi quasi! Yes, dry hands and paper cuts! And the paperwork definitely flows into every nook and cranny, and I'm the main reason that it does so. It's hard to deny this fact when you are staring at countless pieces of paper and unopened EOBs, statements, etc. We have so many transactions online that I don't even open the bills that document the payment. Which is stupid. I have to recognize my role in this vast accumulation. It's comparable to one being fat and out of shape, my papers were fat and out of shape.

I agree with the school papers quandry, so many emotional issues tied to anything children create. Flylady has some very good suggestions about having a "Wall of Fame" where a child's work is displayed but once a month, a favorite piece-just one-is selected/stored and everything else gets sent to granparents with a love note. Clear slate. Then the child can hang new work. Isn't that brilliant? A win-win for the child, less guilt for the parent, and a special letter to a grandparent. I love that! Plus, it trains everyone that there will always be more coming, so the need to cling to past things is not as pressing.

I also like your idea of a "shred-me" folder for things that need to be shredded in the future rather than retained forever. This is the gray zone that I need to master.-short term files I also need to figure out what is available online (statements and notices, plus service agreements, etc) so that I can get rid of stuff that is already available. Paperless.... why don't I like the sound of that? And how many online accouts can one successfully maintain? In so many ways, a sound file system is a time saver. Online data is locked down, which is a good thing but it isn't as easy as opening a file drawer, IMHO.

Yesterday, Wednesday, there wasn't a lot of time to work on paper. I shredded about a brown paper bag's worth of old papers. I found an insurance check for $749, but a phone call determined that a replacement check was issued and cashed. Wouldn't that have been quite a find! I purchased two items to help with things that need my husband's attention: a clipboard for urgent things and a mesh zipper case for work-related expenses/bills to be vouchered at the office. Having a home for this kind of important paperwork is a relief. In the past (like two days ago) I taped this stuff on the mirror over his sink. Not so pleasant for Mr. Cupofkindness but at least it kept things out of a pile.

This paper smackdown is draining and tedious, but I'm winning. Now it's those "last 10 pounds" that are so tough to lose. Thanks for your encouragement, quasifish! And by the way, what does your name mean?

lol, gardenwebcupofkindness, my name doesn't mean much really. It's just a play on a nickname. I'm a quasi-fish, not a real fish :)

oh yeah, other people are an issue for me too. I hate asking DH to go through his papers. I know I like to do it when I'm in the right frame of mind to sort, but he's never going to be in the right frame of mind. He just looks annoyed when I show up with old papers. When it comes to him, I try to keep the stacks small- like 5 minute sorts. It usually works.

We already sort of have a wall-of-fame for DD- and it happened by accident. Our home came with a non-descript metal front door, which we quite hated and intended to replace, but later we decided to get a security door and then there was no good point in replacing the front door. Well, the inside of the front door is as good as a refrigerator, but without all the food residue. We use magnets and hang anything worthy there. When she's on break, I usually clean off the door and start fresh when school starts up again (during the summer, after spring break, after winter break, etc.) But the problem is that all the papers go into a box for later attention that they don't often get.

The other thing I've had problems coming across is stuff that is too much to deal with at the time and so it gets put aside. For example, DH was laid off from a job more than a decade ago. As always, that's a rough time, but we just recently found the folder with all this stuff in it. It was important to keep for a few months, but if you never bother to get back to it there it still sits 10 years later.

I also haven't jumped on board with a lot of paperless billing/statements. Honestly, I also like to have paper on hand, and find I can often access it faster than other info. Last week I needed to access some checking information from about a year ago and guess what? The bank website was down- unfortunately, or fortunately, that bolstered my belief in keeping hard copies for a year or two, as I was able to pull out the pertinent paperwork within 10 minutes.

Out of curiosity, did you jump into your paperwork purge randomly, or did you save harder to sort paperwork for later? or what?

I know you have your file cabinet already, but to anyone who is going to buy one:

Get one with full-extension drawers. Round up, in terms of quality and money. But most of all: full-extension drawers. I cannot, cannot stress that enough.

You need to be able to easily access the last 4 inches of the file drawer, or it will become unusable in a very short time.

I went to an office-supply store and bought a two-drawer cabinet, and I got the third-least-expensive version. I have been grateful ever since. Some tools are far superior to others. And sometimes it makes a major, functional difference. Filing cabinets are one of those tools.

Quasi,

I agree with you on paperless. Not sure of the advantages yet, but maybe younger families love this option and if it saves them the headache of overwhelming paperwork, then go for it. And you're right, you never know when a website might be down, you can only be sure that it will be a pain.

I jumped right into this purge, knowing that some of the paperwork would be easy to deal with and other things would present challenging decisions that I might not be able to make now. I gave myself a week (which amounts to 2-5 hours a day of decision making and processing). Holiday preparations begin on November 1st. What doesn't get finished now, I'll deal with gradually starting after New Years, Flylady style... baby steps. I focused on the most essential paperwork first, like insurance, documents, and flex spending eligible medical expenses. I'm not spending any time tidying up the files that hold less-than-critical information on our roof, foundation, AC/furnace, or tax info, sentimetal things, etc. These are a file maintenance issue that I will work on little by little (except taxes, that will get plenty of attention in January and we will keep close tabs on that paperwork). I don't save warranties and very few receipts - now that I've thrown out that stack from 2003 : ) ! I made a decision that all children's artwork and things are going into one single box, an underbed-type translucent container. I cannot do anything more at this point. One day, I'll sort that box with each child.

I am a little overwhelmed. We are a large family and have had a demanding few years, and this has been a massive catch up. I never want to do this again. Sizing down from a spacious four-drawer file cabinet with full extension drawers left a surprising amount of paper to be dealt with. And Talley is right. My Container Store file cabinet isn't as practical as the one that she is recommending. I had a gift card to the Container Store, they were on sale, and the rest is history. The drawers roll smoothly and the workmanship is nice, but there are those three inches or so in the back that are difficult to reach. Really, this file cabinet is probably equivalent to one of the drawers of the cabinet we owned in 2014. But I don't mind, we have to throw away the excess, not store it. It's all about decisions. I decided I wanted a small file cabinet, and it fits nicely next to the desk. But do I wish it had full extension drawers!

Today I shredded and tossed about four grocery bags of paper, put away the temporary work table, and have nearly finished going through desk top baskets: two wire and two plastic. Trying to boil everything down to only the wire baskets only since space on the desk top is limited. I'm a little more detached from the remaining paperwork (nothing critical), and now that I've honed my decision making skills, it should go a little faster tomorrow.On a different note, on further inspection of those real estate financial files, two folders pertained to kitchen remodels: one in our first house (sold) and a 2005 remodel in this house. I found the bank's lien release letter for this home improvement loan, so all of that paper was shredded too. No more legal files!

Finally, I bought two plastic totes in case we need extra storage for medical information. We have had our fair share of medical issues for nine people in the past few years. It's a lot to manage. I had hope I wouldn't need to fall back on more containers, but they are here just in case.

That's all that's fit to print. Thank you for your encouragement!

It's Friday and I spent about three hours this morning going through a very, very heavy tote box packed with paper. Nearly all of it was 8-10 years old, and the majority was children's things like beautiful artwork, adorable written assignments, Scouting materials, worksheets and projects, precious photographs and other sweet mementoes of past. This box was in my closet until last month (I had a closet smackdown in September), then I moved it to my college kid's bedroom to deal with in October. Here's the now-empty box, something we've all seen before, nothing new:

I had a copy of the New York Times from the day each of my children was born in this box, which of course I kept. There were important things that went straight to the file cabinet-like test scores, report cards, acceptance letters to colleges, etc. Thankfully, I was able to get rid of a gigantic bag of garbage and insignificant papers, far more than half of the original contents. Here's what's left of that purge:

The box fits nicely under my bed, it's new home. In addition, I had a sizable shopping bag filled with stuff from graduate school, things pertaining to our wedding, the move from New York to Texas, etc. Unfortunately, I can't deal with that now, but refuse to leave paper in an open container. So I packed those in a tote, stashed under my desk to remind me that it needs attention:

It's immensely helpful to play Hoarders reruns while dejunking. I usually can't have a lot going on in the background when the paperwork involves a lot of reading and filing decisions, but this was an easy batch to process with a couple of episodes strongly motivating me to toss useless stuff. Finally, it bears repeating that bringing everything into one area to sort/purge helps confront the scope of the problem and focus on getting rid of paper that no longer has any use or value, and finding a home for those that do. I wish that it didn't take ten years to learn this lesson, but better late than never.

My inaugural paper smackdown ended yesterday. It's good to have a definite end because it pushes a wrap up. I was ready to be done, worn out by the work. First, what did I fail to accomplish last week? Quite a few things, actually. Medical paperwork is not completely filed, but it's out of the stacks of papers and a couple of bills were paid. I didn't make a medical journal, but when everything is in order, it will be easy. The most important change is that now all of the medical stuff is in one place. I have moved the medical files to the left cherry desk drawer, which is a narrow file drawer with sturdy, full-extending hardward. So convenient and the perfect spot for medical information because we need easy access to it.

I did not make it to the black file cabinet to dejunk it, but at least everything inside is contained. I did not go through two desk-top baskets full of papers, but certain critical items like a car title are now in the cabinet. There is still a lot of work to be done in the area of filing.

We receive frequent mailings from our insurance company documenting monthly EFT payments and renewals several times a year. We still have a tough time getting current insurance cards into gloveboxes (being a large family, we insure a fleet of six cars that renew at different times), in part because opening insurance mail and going through all of those useless pages of notifications is tedious. So I'm willing to go paperless here. We had a roof replaced last year, and that claim was filed through a different company which we no longer use for home or auto. I was able to shred everything from that old company. Good riddance!

Shredding the old home owners loans documentations, plus re-fi papers was simply huge. Going forward, I need to find out exactly what must be kept of the enormous packet the borrowers receive at closing, I'm thinking that it's mainly the promissary note and the letter showing that the loan has been paid off. The rest is useless. Once a house is sold, all of that paperwork can be tossed. I'll find out more about this.

Packing all of the kids' artwork and other school-aged papers into one underbed box was also very freeing. I didn't part with anything I couldn't let go, but there had been plenty of work that was silly to have around. That stage of our lives is over, so that box will probably stay put until my children move into their own homes, then I can give their artwork back. There is one picture of our family that my DD2 drew in third grade that I would like to frame. Everything else can stay in the box.

Friday morning I found a second plastic storage box that I wasn't expecting: more sentimental things from college, grad school, letters, etc. and quite a few planners and calendars from back in the day. I put these into two small underbed boxes. I couldn't deal with it this week. Such happy years, I want to take my time. I look forward to reading everything, it will be wonderful. Maybe I'll get back to it in October 2016.

Over the course of the past few months, I realized just how sick and tired I am of being "owned" by my stuff. Of feeling at odds with my spouse and children - over stuff. Of seeing my house as an enemy, the feeling of being locked in mortal combat - with my stuff. I have got to change this mindset.

In spite of this feeling, my smackdown was a success. I have the open space to prove it. What was accomplished was huge: I touched nearly every piece of paper that we have in our house, except those in my DH's closet (which I dealt with in the summer of 2014). I found our wills, our social security cards, wonderful pictures, beautiful artwork... things that were buried, treasures lost that we didn't even know were missing.

I read "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" by Marie Kondo. It's a charming book that I checked it out of the library, waited months for it. The most important lesson I learned in Tidying Up is to gather, then sort / purge everything that is similar into one room. Move like-things into a single space and take a hard look at all of it. Having things stockpiled in several places: the kitchen, den, garage, attic, basement, hall closet, bedroom, etc results in people like me having no idea how much is owned, and so begins clutter and disorganziation. My paper smackdown was successful because I spent September and early October gathering paperwork from the kitchen. computer areas, living room, and closets and moving it into my bedroom. I had to deal with all of it at once for this to work. Babysteps are quite effective, but I needed a large, focused effort to change the way I live and have peace in my home.

In using the receipt spindle, I finally saw how much shopping I had done in thirty-one days in the stack of receipts. Far too much.... but at least all of the receipts were in one place so I could finally see it. October reciepts are off the spindle, it's now clear for November. This change is something to celebrate, I'm very thankful for it.

Flylady encourages people to form better habits. Resolving clutter means changing the mindset that enables me to postpone a decision about paper or stuff, plus the mindset that allows me to spend the money and bring it in the house in the first place. I have a lot to think about in terms of the value of possessions as I move into the holidays.

Finally, we've nailed the habit of dealing with mail standing up, opening each piece of mail every day and moving it out of the kitchen right away. Yesterday poor DH received a citation for making a left-turn on a red (thank you, red-light camera). We opened it up around noon and by 2:00 I was handing the return envelope-payment enclosed to the desk clerk at the post office. This would not have happened even six months ago. I have a long way to go.... it's all about babysteps, but we have pushed hard for six months. We are changing. We won't be on an episode of Hoarders. Thank God for small favors!

Great job! I feel so inspired reading about what you've been doing. It will be good for you to take a bit of a break and work on other things for a while though.

Oh, I also love that book! That one habit of bringing all like things together in one place has changed how I do things. Before reading that, I would have sworn I was already great at deciding where to put things, but after methodically going through the house, it became clear how spread out certain items could be- scissors is one example that comes to mind.

Her take on paper- "get rid of everything" doesn't quite work for us, but I realize how much paper we have that we do not need. It is hard to go through it all, and I have that exact problem that you mentioned, in not knowing what has to be kept long term when it comes to things like mortgages. We tend to just keep it all, just in case until we know for absolute certainty. Other things confuse me as well. For years, we heard that you could get rid of taxes after 7 years or so, but more and more lately I hear the recommendation to keep copies of the actual return indefinitely. It's hard to know what is right, so to be safe, I've started keeping just the old returns together in a separate folder, but shredding the other documentation from the year. It's just that there are a few things that seem so important it's easy to hesitate about getting rid of them.

Couldn't agree more with you about open containers and paper. We live in the western US and have been hit fairly hard in this drought. Not only has that brought much more dust to the inside of our house, but it's also brought lots and lots of bugs who are being driven in from outlying areas in search of water. Critters like cockroaches, flies, silverfish, etc. Add to that that the toads who use to patrol the yard are low in numbers without water, and we have neighbors that are not the cleanest... well, in sealed containers you don't have to worry so much about unhappy bug surprises or what they leave behind... :^( My mother was notorious for storing things poorly in open boxes, and it was always an adventure sorting through those things, particularly if they had spent any time in her attic (*shudder*)

That's just an amazing amount of work you've done. That many more steps toward ongoing organization!

The drawers roll smoothly and the workmanship is nice, but there are those three inches or so in the back that are difficult to reach.

You might consider finding something that you want to keep but really won't need, and put it in those back 3 inches. Something that you'd be willing to dig for if you needed it. (Like, old tax returns, or any other sort of similar thing.)

It will cut down on the usable space, but it will keep stuff you actually use from getting back in there.

(I think that there should be a law against non-full-extension file cabinets)

lol, talley_sue, I forgot to agree with how right you are about full extension drawer slides! That is the absolute truth. A drawer with full extension is just amazing. When we bought our house, DH replaced the old, crummy kitchen drawer slides with full extension- they are wonderful. This morning I was thinking about this post when I was trying to locate a lost make-up brush in the back of a 3/4 extension drawer in the bathroom. It's a pain- it's like a black hole back there. No idea why DH didn't do those too, we may have a project in the future. But most of the places we still have 3/4 extension, it's interesting to see what finds its way back there to hibernate.

Yes, quasi, I agree with you about Marie Kondo. The notion of getting everything in one place to sort and purge is wonderful. I don't hear this recommendation from Flylady, probably because she recognizes that this can be an overwhelmong prospect. Flylady recommends that you don't take out what you cannot put back in one hour. A more measured approach. Marie recommends an intensive six month focused sort/purge to radically change the way you manage stuff. This is what we have done, without knowing her method (I just checked out "Tidying Up" about 10 days ago). It has resulted in a life-changing shift for me, this past six months of organizing. It began with my daughters then-upcoming wedding. Anyway, regarding MK's ideas about paper: I think her attitude about paper management reflects her youth and inexperience. And perhaps in Japan the pressure to keep every piece of paper forever, simply isn't there. And like you, I was once of the mindset to toss tax documents after 7 years, but now I see how foolish that might be. Laws change, financial things are complicated, spouses die, and the amount of space that an old filed tax return takes up is minimal compared to the vast amount of time and energy it would take to retrieve that information elsewhere.

On a similar note, I talked to a mortgage industry friend who recommends keeping the following loan documents as a minimum:

1. HUD statement, which is now called a "Closing Disclosure."

2. Promissary Note

3. Deed of Trust (also on record at your county courthouse)

4. Appraisal/Survey

And he didn't mention this, but should we retain proof of

5. Title Insurance? Since the policy is not for the homeowners benefit, I don't know. Doesn't hurt though!

He said the legalese federal truth-in-lending type disclosures, which is the majority of the paperwork, are not vital to your loan once you've read and signed them, and copies would be available at the title company IF you ever needed them. Can you think of anything else from a current mortage loan that should be kept on file?

Back to our home office:

Most of the files in the top not-full extension drawer of our little black cabinet are for each member of our family, and hold three basic folders: 1. medical (like shots records and eye exams/prescriptions), 2. educational (report cards, diplomas and major test scores), and 3. ID documents like birth certificates and photocopies of drivers licenses, social security cards, etc. Based on what Talley said about the dead space in the back of the drawer, I changed the contents of the last two hanging files (mine and DH's) from gray three-tab tagboard folders to sturdy plastic pocket-type folders. DH's is red and mind is gold.

It's so much easier to grab the plastic folders. We can retrieve them without too much of a hassle. Thanks, Talley!

Next, here is a picture of our FULL-EXTENSIOM cherry desk drawer with my evolving medical files, thanks Pennsylvania House!

This drawer is so deep that it converts to legal-width files, even then with room to spare, but since we use letter-files only, the back six or so inches holds college degrees, our original wedding license, and the leftover invitations from my DD1's wedding in a white box. You can see how I labeled the medical files. Still a work in process.

Finally, my bare spindle. I felt ashamed at how many receipts were on the spindle from October and have vowed to manage things differently this month. I have three receipts in my handbag for November to stick here.

The icon serves to remind me of what I'm here for. For love, not stuff!

Love that last peaceful pic :^) No receipts on the spindle... yet.

I am also shocked and a little dismayed at how many receipts we can gather in just a month.

That's very interesting what you learned about mortgages. My brain seems to turn to confused mush when so much as looking sideways at the paperwork :^( Right now we still have ALL the original paperwork from our first loan, which was refinanced years back. It seems like once we got paperwork that showed that loan was paid off, and the new lien was recorded with the county-- all that old paperwork could be destroyed. I guess it just seemed so important, that I still feel like it must play in somewhere... I'm no where near ready to think about getting rid of anything from the current loan! Fear will make me keep that file complete, I suspect (at least the new one).

I was guessing that MK's attitude about paperwork had something to do with how the Japanese do business, versus what we deal with here. In one of her passages, she talks about returning to the shop if you have problems with a warranty item- so therefore you don't need to keep the paperwork. I can think of a handful of things we have that are registered in some way with a company for warranty- but I can think of a whole lot of other things we have that we probably need to have that proof of purchase. That said though, I've realized that there are some items that are so inexpensive to begin with, we probably wouldn't seek the warranty, so we tend not to keep that paperwork. But as far as other legal/medical/banking/etc. paperwork, I have no idea how they do that where she is, so have to apply a best guess to the paperwork we truly need to keep.

All your pictures look so tidy and well organized! Are you ready for a break from the action? Or are you itching to sort and shred more?

I am definitely ready for a break! Thanksgiving is just a few weeks away and Christmas is not far behind! But I'm a little worried because honestly, there is more loose paper than can fit in our files. Dealing with paper takes time, and I have to keep at it. But paper accumulation has practically come to a halt. Very little mail is worth keeping, we don't subscribe to much-magazines/ news-type papers usually come from membership in this or that, and the kids don't create adorable artwork anymore. Any ultra-important mail gets taped to the wall until it's dealt with. That sounds goofy and it's ridiculous to see two or three or more envelopes taped up a wall (we have a little wall not much wider than an envelope in our kitchen, not exactly in plain view but not hidden either), but we have misplaced tax bills and jury summons and things like the red-light ticket too often to risk losing such things. The drama associated with late penalties or wandering car registration stickers is far greater than envelopes on the wall. If you have ever been pulled over because your registration is out-of-date, but you know it's actually in a pile somewhere in the kitchen, you understand. Things like this keep us humble. As for your mortage loan files, quasi, as long as you have a place for them-keep them. There is nothing wrong with hanging onto those files if you have a home for them. If we weren't so short on space, I would be less ruthless about storing documents. : )

Here is an good article from Quicken regarding mortgage loan paperwork:

http://www.quickenloans.com/blog/how-long-should-you-keep-your-mortgage-documents

Naturally, they recommend that you retain everything for as long as you own the property, which is very sound advice. Check out the comments too. Thanks!

It sounds like you are definitely getting a more workable system in place. Think how organized you can be, given more time :^)

Thanks for the link- I'll check it out.

I've definitely got to go through paperwork more, see how ruthless I can be too!

" Based on what Talley said about the dead space in the back of the drawer, I changed the contents of the last two hanging files (mine and DH's) from gray three-tab tagboard folders to sturdy plastic pocket-type folders. DH's is red and mind is gold.

. . .It's so much easier to grab the plastic folders. We can retrieve them without too much of a hassle. Thanks, Talley!"

That's BRILLIANT!

What a great way to make access to those last few inches easier.

I'm glad I was able to help--but you get credit for that. I'd never thought of that sort of thing.

(leftover wedding invites? Toss 'em. Set aside 3 in an "Heirlooms" box or something, and toss 'em)

Okay quasifish, are you a swimmer? Or part mermaid? A pescetarianist? It's 20 questions on the meaning of your name. : )

Friday I spent a miserable an hour and a half on the phone tyring to link my Macy's card to an online profile. Very problematic, I never thought it would require so much time. After fiddling around with phone menus for 15 minutes, I was transferred to someone in the Phillipines who told me that Safari is an incompatible browser, had me upload Firefox, and change some other system parameters (none helped) until I finally hung up. Googled other options. Then I found customer support in Ohio and they were brilliant. Fast and easy through the back door. So now that I can see thransactions online, I'll shred the statement as soon as payment posts.

I've changed my mind about mortgage loan documents. With a little friskars paper cutter, they'll be trimmed to letter size, then I'll store the lot in back of the lower drawer in an extra capacity plastic hanging file jacket or hanging pocket. A good way to use that dead space and move a massive file out of the way. I'll check Staples tomorrow. I'm also tempted to have them spiral bound by Kinkos, but that would cost about $5 which is enough of a deterent. I have to keep my OCD tendencies in check!

You're right about the invites, Talley. I want to frame one, then save a couple more. The envelopes are worth saving. Such lovely invitations but they must go. Totally useless at this point.

Any progress or brilliant idea having to do with paperwork in your housefolds, ladies? *Ruthless* is the right word, quasi, makes me want to go step on a spider (Hope you get the reference from the movie Ruthless People. Actually, we generally catch spiders and release them in the yard).

You are putting together some great ideas for organization and storage.

I feel for you on that CC thing. Glad you got it worked out. Here's one you'll love-- we still have a few bills we pay by check because it's too problematic trying to navigate the online system. The most notable of those bills is our internet provider-- the one bill that should be easy and straightforward to pay online IMO. But after a few didn't go through, the browser hung, and so forth, I just gave up and send in a check.

My user name is not really all that meaningful, you know :^) I came up with it on a whim when GW started having user names instead of names and email addresses. When I was a kid, I did spend all summer in the water from about the age of 10, and did swim like a fish- not competitively. I don't drink like a fish though, lol. But to be sadly honest with you, here is a story from around the time I chose it: part of our last name sounds a lot like "fish", so people have always called members of DH's family that as a nickname. Some inlaws had made unkind comments about me that implied I wasn't really part of the family so much as just DH's wife. So with that going on, the name came up and I took it- maybe just to be ornery at the time. Oh, and pseudofish was taken :^p (seriously).

I have not had a chance to go through much more paperwork. I need to clear out some of the boxes of junk marked for the thrift store first. Until that is done, there is not enough work space. I also need to go through some older clothes of DD's and decide which, if any, we'll keep. We have very few of her clothes and toys left, so just trying to thin down to the most meaningful, or things that won't seem weird to see in 20 years. Once those are under control, then it will be time for more paperwork, but that may wait until after the holidays here too.

I've shredded all of my Macy's statements now that I can verify everything online. I keep all of the other Macy's paperwork/coupons/receipts in a red plastic envelope.

Finally organized the paperwork for our current mortgage. At first, I thought I'd buy deep file pockets, but they are sold in packs of 4 or more, and I only needed one to hold the 60 or so pages of paperwork concerning our current loan. I found this binder at Target, super cheap for $1.29. Once again, P-Touch makes life so much easier to organize:

And here is it's new home, in the way, way back of the bottom file cabinet drawer. I think Talley would approve:

Current statements are filed here too. Not so handy but easy to find and return to its place in the cabinet. Since the official survey is legal size and laminated it lives in a desk drawer.

My mortgage lending frield says that the most important documents to keep in addition to your current loan are the documents associated with your first loan, particularly concerning the title work. This is because it reflects the legal status of the property at the time of purchase which might be important if issues arise when you eventually sell. For intermediary loans that are no longer active you should keep the HUD/Closing Statement , promissary note, and the letter confirming payoff from the lender. I'm not sure how the deed of trust fits in. I assume it's like the title to your car, and the bank holds the deed until you own your home 100%. Homeowners insurance has its own file with auto insurance since one company insures both. Thank you!

Wanna come over and help me with my mess? :^p

Oh my goodness, you are getting that paperwork tamed. Thanks for all the information about mortgage paperwork. Since the loan paperwork we've had on the house take up very little space, I think we'll end up keeping them all. For a while I was keeping monthly statements, but I did cull those out and shred them.

Hey, cupofkindness, I thought you were taking a little break and doing the holiday thing- what gives?! (you're making some of us look bad!)

Oh, Quasi, a friend of mine died last week and aside from the immense sadness of her death, the suddeness put things in perspective.... Among other things (far more important other things, I should add) the shape of our files and what we need to do in order to keep them current and accessible to our adult children. For starters we need to update wills and move financial information in one place. There's that "one place" idea again. Such a good one!

It it was a great feeling to punch binder holes in the mortgage documents. Doing little things took my mind off of my dear friend and her family. And finally I'm winning a battle that I was losing for the past 15 years. Papers from home equity loans that are paid and previous re-fi's are still a little disorganized. The goal for now is to just get papers into the right hanging file. I can sort later.

My daughter had a car accident a couple of days ago and it was gratifying to find the insurance policy right away... no digging through stacks of unopened mail or spending endless time on the phone to track down information. I've been able to hand files to my DH so he can deal with his paperwork too. He is truly very helpful.

I made a decision to shred any EOBs coming from our pediatricians and pediatric dentist. It's easy to request information since they converted to electronic records a couple of years ago. And I trust these doctors offices completely because I know that they are highly competent. I'll hang onto specialist EOBs and lab/hospital info. Such a simple change.... Why didn't I see this before?

It all starts with opening the mail. The receipt spindle is a godsend, but keeping my purse clean is hard. As an aside it is a huge help to keep coupons in my car's second glovebox and all automobile repair/maintenance receipts and records in each of our cars as well. Only official documents pertaining to the cars are filed in the cabinet. One car has a loan and we only keep the most recent statement, which is an automatic payment so we just file the statement with the loan documents. Quasi what do you keep in the way of monthly statements? Do you keep statements in the loan file or in a separate folder of current information and bills? Still trying to figure out the best way to manage this. Thank you!

Oh gardenwebcupofkindness, I am so sorry about the loss of your friend. Isn't it interesting the clear perspective times like these give us? I recall losing someone very close to me when DD was young. At the time I had been keeping totes of outgrown baby clothes and realized in that instant that all this stored fabric meant nothing. The things we really want to keep forever, we cannot. I got rid of most of the clothes very shortly following that.

One of my relatives put together a master sheet which contained all pertinent information about finances, loans, insurance, etc. It also contained user names and passwords for important accounts- all in one place on one piece of paper, strategically placed where it would be safe, but not hard to find either.

In regard to monthly statements, here is what I do with all manner of those. It might not be very good, though it works for me! I tend to keep all utility bills in one folder and then shred all but the last one at the end of the year. There isn't a reason to keep them, aside from being lazy- although sometimes we do check back on them for whatever reason- usage in a particular month, for example. These I keep in a desk-type drawer where a variety of current information is kept- things like DD's school information, eyeglass RX, etc- those things we can't lose!

As far as loan statements for things like house and car, CC statements, bank statements, and any of those other things that don't need to be kept for all that long. I lump them all into a single file. That is also stored in that drawer until the end of the year. At that point, I put a rubber band around the file and write on the front of it "Financial 2015" Then I file it, just like that- no organization whatsoever, except that the folder only contains those financial type items. If I need a particular statement, it will take less than 10 minutes to find, but it's rare we even access these. These, I keep for a couple of years, and then shred at the end of a given year. The main reason to keep those things was for the CC statements, because some of our CCs offer extended warranties on items purchased with the card. When we do buy something big, that needs to be noted, I write the item on a small piece of paper and staple it onto the statement. Nowadays, you can do so much on the CC company websites, but this works for me. I keep them for a year or two and then off they go.

Things for which we get a year end statement, like mortgage, I don't see any reason to keep the monthly statements after that-- although they will still be around at least another year since they are in the 'to be shredded at the end of 201_ ' folder. Hope that makes sense. It's a little disorganized and messy to explain, but it's self contained and low maintenance :)

Looking at what I've written, I guess in a nutshell, you could say I file things according to when they are going to be destroyed, more than by what they are!

Wow Quasi, so many great ideas in your post! You've created a maintainable system because it's intuitive and easy. I love your perspective: is this an accurate interpretation: that you are basically, filing things according to their usefulness. Marie Kondo would be pleased. When the need to hold on is gone, so are the papers. The notion of simply bundling things together, labeling by year and tossing into storage: how freeing! On a different thread, I posted a quote from Graywings that describes her file system which is simple like yours. She files by time period (quarterly) and then a year or so later, tosses the contents of each quarterly file figuring after 12-18 months has gone by without need for it.

My medical files are probably too specific and I should adopt your approach. Here are the titles of those files, which should be short term, but what do I really need to keep?

1. Vision care

2. Dental

3. Prescriptions

4. Labwork and Imaging

5. Provider Receipts

6. EOBs

7. Pending Claims

8. Settled Claims

9. Flex Spending

We used to be an average healthy family with only asthma and vision problems but in the last couple of years several of us have developed issues, and I just don't know how to manage the documentation. I've got to think about it, from your point of view of getting things gone, keeping a minimal paper trail, not creating a perfect archive.

This is my desk right now. I have one more little tote of papers to sort on the floor, and there is a pile near my bed that needs attention too. The "inbox" on my desk is overflowing (that's bad) but my "file box" on the cabinet is at an all time low (that's good), it's got binders there that hold my mother's medical/ financial information that I use regularly. The stocking is there to remind me to get Christmas packages in the mail in the next two weeks. The other flat surfaces in my room have plenty of clutter, not going to photograph those here!

Quasi, it's all about getting things into one place and even packing tightly for now, into the usable space of desk and file cabinet. It doesn't have to be perfect, just in one place so I don't lose something important. Thank you for being such a source of encouragement!

You are doing great! And it sounds like you are doing some of the same things that I am! At the moment, I'm procrastinating (taking a break) from cleaning up my worktable so it can get in gear for Christmas. It's been the world's slowest quilting station for the past few months (in that I only get to it a few minutes here and there), but now I need to change gears and put that away for a short while to start getting packages ready to ship- within the next 2 weeks :)

Medical stuff is interesting in some ways. It's not something that I've had a great deal of experience with, but am getting a little more. From my perspective, I would keep the more bureaucratic end of things in a 'to be shredded' type situation, and keep information pertaining to your actual medical health in chronological order for the long term. Sometimes it's helpful to look back at your medical reports/results over the long term. In some cases you can probably do this online, but I can say for myself that keeping paperwork that you can lay out and look at can be very useful.

I'll give you a very recent example. This week, DH got results from a routine blood test that said it was out of acceptable limits. Very quickly we were able to pull out paperwork results from the last time he had these tests from two different sources (4yrs and9 yrs) and the levels were almost identical- and considered normal then. This was incredibly helpful for us to not panic and to come up with suitable questions regarding what is going on (i.e. was it suppose to have been a fasting test they did, but they forgot to mention that to him?)

This is a little bit difficult to write about, so I will try to keep it succinct, but last year a family member of ours overdosed on RX drugs. What happened was he messed up his brain and essentially made himself a dementia type patient for 5 months, unable to care for himself. During that time, we ended up setting out and tracking down as much medical information as we could about him, because he was not capable of answering questions from a standpoint of reality. It would have been much easier had we had paper copies from his home to begin with. For the first few months, we didn't have an accurate medical picture of who he had been for the past years (he is a hermit, for lack of a better word) which made his doctor's appointments a hit-and-miss proposition. In the end, my DH ended up collecting everything we were able to get from the past few years, and filing it in chronological order inside of a binder. I would definitely go that book-style route again with medical records and decide on the topic whether they should be kept for 2 years, 5 years, indefinitely.

Right now, DH, DD and I are able to keep all our medical stuff in a small folder, but as we get older and have more things going on, I will probably look into using a binder, maybe even filing by year with page separators?

Hope you find a good system and get your packages out on time :)

Quasi, the story about your husband's labwork certainly underscores the need for organized medical paperwork. Doctors change, systems change, and standards change. For example, the diagnosis of "high blood pressure" has been controversial as big pharma has redefined the levels (lower normals) to increase the number of patients on HBP meds. Good thing you saved the lab work results from prior years. It helps to slow things down while you consider the treatment options.

And your hermit relative.... doesn't almost every family have one? We have at least one in my family. Getting medical care is just about impossible. Sadly, their last days will be difficult and it's beyond our control to change the direction their lives are taking.

I'm so happy that your family needs only one folder at this point. Thank God. After thinking it over and trying different ideas (binders and clipboards), an expanding 12-pocket file might be best for my DCs who have medical issues. Things need to be easy to put away so that they are put away. Put away in one place. And like you said, if something is needed you will go through that file to get it.