Get inspired to organize your own filing cabinets after reading about the categories and folders in my organized filing cabinets!

If you have been following along, you know that I have been talking about paper a lot recently.  I have talked about putting all of my papers in my inbox first and then what I do with those papers.  Some of those papers end up in my filing cabinets.  I mentioned before that I would share more details about how I organize my filing cabinets.  Today is the day I am sharing what types of categories and folders I have.

This might not be the most interesting topic to read about.  However, it is always helpful for me to know what other people are doing with their papers.  Seeing what types of papers other people save and how they organize them helps me decide what to do with my own papers.  I hope that I can help you with your filing cabinet organizing by showing you what I do.

Organizing filing cabinets can be an overwhelming task because there is a lot of paper to go through at the beginning.  If you aren’t ready to organize your papers yet, feel free to pin this post so you can refer to it when you are ready.

*Before I get started, I just want to say that I am not an expert.  I am not providing any type of legal advice related to what you should do with your papers.

ORGANIZED FILING CABINETS

In the past, I had papers in multiple places.  They were in several different folders, binders, and boxes.  My husband also had his own papers that were stored separately.  Everything was a disorganized mess and it drove me crazy!

One of the first purchases we made after moving into our house over six year ago were some filing cabinets.  We bought two filing cabinets for our office.  There is a tall filing cabinet with four narrower drawers and a shorter filing cabinet with two wider drawers.

After buying the filing cabinets, we spent some time thinking about the best way to organize all of our papers.  My husband and I wanted to have our papers organized in a way that makes the most sense to us.  These filing cabinets are now organized and they hold most of the papers in our house.  It took awhile to get everything organized in the first place, but it’s pretty easy to keep up with the system now that we have everything set up.

The main categories have stayed pretty consistent since we set them up.  I occasionally add some new folders, like when we have a new baby or when there is a new tax year.  Sometimes I remove some folders that are no longer relevant.  Over time, the categories in the filing cabinets will change as our life situation changes.

The current categories and file folders we have in our filing cabinets are listed and described below.

CATEGORIES AND FOLDERS IN OUR FILING CABINETS

Current Reference Materials

This folder holds all of the papers that contain information that I am going to be needing in the near future.  The papers that go into this folder are not meant to be in this folder forever.  I put them in this folder so that I will be able to reference them when I need them in the near future.  After that, they will either get thrown away or go into the appropriate folder in the filing cabinets.

My current reference materials folder is one of my favorite folders.  It allows me to clear the paper clutter off of my desk, but still have it nearby when I need it.  My husband and I each have our own current reference materials folder.

Bills

Most of my bills are online, but not all of them.  We still get a utility bill in the mail each month.  I have a folder to store these paper bills and also any other paperwork that is related to our utilities.  There is a separate folder that holds paperwork related to the mortgage on our home.

Insurance

I have one folder for our homeowners insurance and another folder for our auto insurance.  I also keep a few other papers in my homeowners insurance folder, such as warranty information and protection plans for furniture or appliances.  In my mind, this information is similar enough to homeowners insurance.  It makes sense for me to store it here because it’s the first place I would go  look for it if I need it.

Vehicles

My husband and I each have a folder for our vehicle.  These folders contain all of the information related to our vehicles, including oil change receipts, recall information, and any other service receipts or information.

Money

We have a few money-related folders in our filing cabinets.

• Receipts: I have a folder to store the receipts from large purchases that we make.  They are for unrelated items, but it’s nice to have one spot to keep all of them.  This makes it a lot easier to find a receipt when I need it!
• Credit Cards & Reward Cards: This folder is where I store all of my credit card and reward card information.  I actually keep a lot of reward cards themselves in this folder because a lot of stores can look up my account by typing in my phone number.  If I don’t need the card with me in the store, I might as well keep it at home instead of carrying it around with me.  I use business card pages to easily store all of the different cards in this folder.
• Bank: I have general information about the banks we use and the services they offer.  I got most of this paperwork from when I set up bank accounts for my kids.
• Retirement: This is where I keep general information about the retirement accounts my husband and I have.

Medical, Dental And Vision

These folders are probably pretty self explanatory, but each member of our family has their own medical, dental, and vision folders.  Well, my one-year-old son hasn’t been to the dentist or eye doctor yet, so he doesn’t have his own folders for those categories right now!

The medical folders are further split up into doctor and prescription folders.  These could probably be combined, but I would rather have two file folders with less papers in them than one file folder stuffed with a lot of papers.  It makes it easier for me to keep track of everything that way.

Health Related

These folders contain a lot of random handouts and pamphlets that are related to being healthy.

• Health & Nutrition References: This is where I keep all of the health and nutrition papers that I have acquired over the years from different events or programs.  I also have contact information for different doctors in the area and urgent care centers that I may need to use someday.
• Workouts: I have participated in 5K and half marathon training programs in the past, so I have the training plans for those in this folder.  I also have miscellaneous workouts that I have saved from magazines.

Food And Drink

I have some recipes that I saved before Pinterest existed.  One of these days, I plan to go through them and either throw away the recipes that I don’t like or save them in a recipe binder if I do like them.  However, they are going to stay in the filing cabinets for now.

• Dinner / Desserts / Snacks / Drinks: I have saved several different recipes from magazines or other places with things that I want to try.  I have separate file folders for dinner, desserts, snacks, and drinks.
• Wine: Even though wine is a drink, it gets its own folder.  My husband and I like to go to wineries and try different wines.  When we do this, we usually get a piece of paper that lists all of the different wines that are available for sampling.  I usually take notes on those papers and then save them in this folder so I can remember what I like.

Home Maintenance

The two maintenance folders I have in my filing cabinets are yearly home maintenance and occasional home maintenance.

• Yearly Home Maintenance: The yearly home maintenance folder includes paperwork for things we do at least every year for our house.  For example, the paperwork for our sprinkler system is in this folder because we have to get it turned on and off each year.
• Occasional Home Maintenance: The occasional home maintenance folder includes paperwork for things we get done for our house regularly, but not necessarily every year.  This folder includes things like getting the siding power washed and getting the air ducts cleaned.

Home Reference Material

I have reference materials for our home split into exterior and interior categories.  I also have some information from when we moved into our new house.

• Home Exterior Information: This folder contains information about the outside of our house.  For example, we have information about our siding, gutters, and yard in this folder.
• Home Interior Information: This folder is similar to the home exterior information folder, but has information about the inside of the house.
• Moving Houses: I have folders that have all of the information from buying our house and selling our old place.  Both of these processes involved a lot of paperwork, so I have several folders with this type of information.

Home Decor And Organization

I have several other home related folders in my filing cabinets, too!  Folders in this category include home remodel, home organization, home decorating, and home cleaning.

• Home Remodel: This is where I keep the paperwork from when we have had work done on our house.  For example, we had some work done in our basement, so all of the paperwork from that is in this folder.  Also, I have some paint swatches in this folder with notes about where we used certain paint colors.
• Home Organization: This folder has a lot of reference materials in it with ideas for organizing.  When I see a picture of an organized space in a magazine, I will put it in this folder for future reference.  Also, if I see something related to organizing that I might want to buy someday, I will put that information in here, too.
• Home Decorating: This folder is similar to the home organization folder because I keep a lot of inspiration pictures in this folder.  If I see something that I would like in my house, I will save it in this folder.  I save a lot of pictures from magazines.  A lot of the pictures have different paint colors that I might like to use in my house someday or other types of decorations that I might want.  I also have some flyers from different furniture stores that I might want to shop at in the future.
• Home Cleaning: I have different cleaning tips in this folder.  Again, I have a lot of pages from magazines that have cleaning tips.  I also have some information about cleaning companies in our area and the services they provide.

Kids

The sections in the filing cabinets for our children are quickly starting to take up a lot of space!

• Pregnancy: It’s amazing how much information I got when I was pregnant.  I have a lot of information that I got from doctor offices, baby fairs, and a few classes that I took.  All of these papers are split up into a few different file folders.
• Daycare Paperwork: Our kids have attended two different places for daycare.  I have records of my applications, payments, and all of the information that was provided during the registration process.  At one daycare, my kids brought home a paper each day that showed what they did that day.  There is also a bunch of other information that gets sent home with the kids regularly.
• Art: This is a big section in our filing cabinets right now.  I can’t believe how much art my kids create!  I plan to make photo books of their art someday, but for now we are storing most of the art in the filing cabinets.

Sentimental Items

Some of our sentimental items are in our filing cabinets because I don’t have a better place to store them.  I may move some of these items out of the filing cabinets as I think of better places for them.

• Photo Cards: This folder includes any cards that were sent to our family in the mail that have photographs on them.  These are special to me, so I keep them all.  Family Christmas cards take up the most space in this folder.  However, there are a few other photo cards in here, such as birth announcements, wedding announcements, and birthday party invitations.
• Postcards: I don’t have too many postcards, but the ones I do have are special.  I can’t remember the last time I got a postcard now that texting and email are so popular.  That makes the postcards that I do have even more special.
• Wedding: This folder contains all of the information from our wedding day.  There are a lot of special memories in this folder.  Another benefit to having this folder is that I can easily give recommendations and contact information to friends who might need it.
• Race Numbers: I used to participate in a bunch of different races.  They were mostly 5K races, but I did some other races too.  I have saved the numbers that I wore during the events.  It’s fun to look back at them and remember what I did.
• Memories With Family / Friends: This folder contains miscellaneous sentimental papers that I didn’t know where else to put.  I have one folder for family and another folder for friends.

Travel

I have always loved travelling.  Now that we have two young kids, we don’t travel very much.  However, we will start travelling again as the kids get older.  I have a few different folders in my filing cabinets related to travelling.

• Places To Go: This folder has information about some places to visit in our city.  If I am looking for a new place to take the kids, I can look for ideas in this folder.
• Trips To Take: If I see something in a travel book or on a flyer that has information about a fun place to visit, I will save it in this folder.  Our local newspaper has a special section each year about fun day trips.  I save that information to make planning day trips easier!
• Trips Taken: I have a few papers from past vacations that I save in this folder.  Most of the papers I save are either itineraries that were provided or notes I took about what we did while on the vacation.  I have a bad memory so it’s nice to be able to look back and see what activities I did.  Otherwise I would probably only remember the main activities.

School And Work

We have a few folders dedicated to school and work information.

• School Papers: There are a few papers from school that I think may still be useful, so I save them in this folder.
• Work Papers: We have a few of these folders broken out by company.  These folders are mostly full of benefit information.  My husband has one for his job, and I have some folders from previous jobs.  There are also a few other job-related papers mixed in.
• Career: This folder has some general information like company contacts, old resumes, interviewing questions, and other notes related to our careers.

Community

There are a few folders with information for different parts of our community.

• City Resources & Directories: Sometimes we get information in the mail about different topics for our city.  A lot of these papers arrive with our utility bills.  It might be information about our recycling program, the local businesses, or information about the city pool.  I put this information in this folder for reference.
• Church: I have saved a few different church-related papers throughout the years.  There are some papers related to baptism and some special programs in this folder.
• Volunteering: This folder has information about volunteering opportunities that we might want to be a part of.  My husband participated in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program in the past, so this information is saved in here.

Taxes

We have a folder for each tax year.  Any papers that we need in order to do taxes go into the appropriate tax folder.  Papers get added throughout the year.  It is really nice to have a folder that has all of the tax information in it for a certain year.  This makes it much easier to do taxes later because everything is in one place.

Legal

Most of our legal paperwork is safely locked up.  However, this folder contains some legal-related paperwork, such as contact information for a lawyer.

Someday / Maybe

I created a someday maybe folder after reading David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.  This folder holds information for things that I might want to do in the future, but that I don’t have time to do right now.  Everything that fits in this category goes in this folder so I don’t forget about it.

 

Whew, I think I am done!  This post ended up being much longer than I expected it to be.  I guess I had a lot to say about the papers in my filing cabinets!

I hope that by seeing the types of categories and folders I have in my filing cabinets, it helps you organize your filing cabinets!  Obviously, we won’t have exactly the same categories and folders, but a lot of them may be similar.

Remember that you can pin this post for reference later!

 

What do you keep in your filing cabinets?  How do you keep them organized?  Let me know in the comments below!

Have a great day!

♥Jena♥

 

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