The reason why most people dread filing is because they have the wrong filing system in place. Does your office and filing cabinet look like the one pictured to our right? If so, here is what we found that is wrong:

Before (click on the image to see a larger view)

• The contents of the files have not been purged in years thereby taking up valuable space and making it impossible to file incoming documents in the office.
• Stacks of papers are floating around the office all needing to be filed away.
• Incoming/outgoing mail was found in each corner of the office thereby making it difficult to process and easy to lose.
• Files are randomly placed in the file cabinet making it difficult to locate the file when needed.
• Hanging file folders weren’t labeled consistently.
• Files are labeled with detailed categories (e.g., 2007 Audi) making it time-consuming to create new labels year after year.

Setting up an efficient filing system can be difficult, but we’re here to convince you that the perfect filing system does exist! Here are the things we did to help this frustrated homeowner:

After (click on the image to see a larger view)

• Recycled outdated documents from each of the hanging file folders.
• Shredded old personal identifiable information that was no longer needed.
• Categorized documents by type (e.g., all the financial folders in the front, all the tax folders in the back).
• Color-Coded the filing system with neatly printed labels (e.g., tax documents are blue, permanent documents are red, financial documents are green, etc).
• Labeled hanging file folders with broad categories (e.g., Car #1 Maintenance, Car #2 Maintenance, etc) thereby resulting in never needing to recreate file labels year after year.

Using this system will save you endless time and frustration next time you need to retrieve a document. Setting up a neat and orderly color-coded filing system will change the way you look at filing – guaranteed. After all, we are the experts on color-coding!