Keeping track of Important Papers

This is a guide to keeping track of important papers for people have trouble keeping track of important papers.

I have spent many years losing passports and requesting duplicate tax forms and forgetting to pay my car registration on time because I couldn't find the paperwork. I was not able to keep track of my papers in a filing cabinet and I find myself quickly overwhelmed by paperwork. This is the system I worked out to get a better handle on it.

If you would like this advice in a more humorous and less orderly format, you can see it on Tumblr.

Premise

Essentially, what you are going to do is create a single folder where you do not have to sort papers at a granular level.

Why this Works

It's less overwhelming than a large filing cabinet or a desk drawer (because it's just one binder).
It allows you to find things relatively quickly (because you don't have to go through the whole folder to find your pink slip, just the "car" section).
It creates a place for papers to "go." If you get stressed out by paperwork you may struggle with putting things in the appropriate place, which can lead to accumulating little piles all over the place and having trouble remembering where the specific important piece of paperwork you're looking for goes.
It requires extremely minimal sorting; you're not putting your mechanic's bill into one folder and your pink slip and another and your insurance in another and your lease agreement in another - those all go in "car."
See-through page protectors allow you to see generally what's in the folder as you flip through.

How to Make Your Organization Folder

Materials

One 3-ring binder, no more than 2" thick.
A pack of transparent page protectors (these come in packs of 20-500; my binder has fewer than 20).
Folder organizers; you can use tabs, you can use colored sheets of paper, or you can use something else. I like the stiff colored plastic dividers with little pockets so that I can use the pockets to put the REALLY important stuff (Bloodwork report from the vet can go in a page protector, proof of rabies vaccination goes in the pocket up front of the "pet" section.)

Optional:

A backpack or messenger bag to store the folder where you can also put non-paper objects that need to stay someplace safe or that you would want to grab in an emergency. I have a DVD with my wedding photos, some family heirloom jewelry, and similar items in my bag with the folder.

Instructions

Preliminary Sort

Gather your important papers, your binder materials, and a shredder or trash can in one place where you have a reasonably open workspace.
Begin sorting your papers into very broad categories; "financial" might include bills and tax paperwork, "home" might include a copy of your lease agreement and the business card of your local plumber. Only make as many categories as you have dividers for the binder.
Once you have sorted each category, go through each category and discard duplicates or outdated paperwork. You do not need a pink slip for a car you no longer own (though if you can't bear to part with it, read the page on Memory Books). You do not need a copy of a vet bill you paid three years ago for a checkup with no abnormal results. Remove extraneous papers from your piles as you go to thin down your collection of papers.
Continue until you have gotten rid of at least most of the unnecessary paperwork.

Binder Dividers

Label the dividers with the names of the categories you've created.
Put the dividers in the binder in whatever order makes sense to you.
If this is all you are capable of doing, just stack the papers between the dividers without using the transparent sheet protectors at all. Put the binder in a plastic shopping bag to keep the papers from flying out when you pick it up and call it a day if that's all you can manage.

Stuffing Page Protectors

It is important to note that you are NOT organizing the paperwork any further than you already have. You do not sort by date, you do not alphabetize, you do not try to get granular with where you are putting stuff. You have put stuff in a general category, you do not have to be any more organized than that. If you WANT to, you can designate one transparent protector per section as "Vitally Important" and separate out anything that seems vitally important to you (Birth Certificates, Passports, Pink Slips, Rabies Vaccination Documentation - these are things that you might consider "vitally important." Last month's bank statement is not vitally important). Do not worry about unfolding papers, do not worry about taking things out of envelopes.

Otherwise you're ready to start stuffing.

Cram as much shit into each transparent page protector as will lay reasonably flat and move on to the next one.
You are absolutely not putting each piece of paper in a page protector you are cramming 12-18 letter-folded documents in there with loose receipts and business cards sprinkled in for flavor.
Work one category at a time and put each full page protector into the appropriate space in the binder as you go.
Stop when you run out of documents to put into page protectors.

Maintenance

Do NOT attempt to sort every new document you get into its assigned section of the binder; there's a very good chance you will give up and abandon the system if you're stressed out by frequent attempts to keep it nice.

Instead, as you gather more papers from doctor's visits and DMV letters, put them in the front of your binder. Keep adding things to the front of the binder until the binder no longer lays flat when closed, then do a sort-and-purge of older documents and the documents you've collected (many of which are probably superfluous). Depending on how much paperwork you generate, this may mean that you only need to do a sort every couple of years, or you may need to do it every couple of months.

Ugly is Good

The point of this system isn't to make it so that you have a tidy, curated space with neat dividers for your medical records. The point of this system is for you to not lose papers. You don't have to worry about how it looks, you just have to worry if the paper is in there. This drastically reduces stress from two directions: 1. Hopefully you're no longer scrounging around your apartment for an hour every time you have to find a piece of paper. 2. You don't have to care about it looking nice nobody cares if anyone's filing cabinet looks nice they care if you can find the paper in a timely manner. And it is going to take you MUCH less time to sort through your category section in your binder - or even the entire binder - than it would take to sort through your whole living space or a desk drawer full of loose paper.

Optional Backpack of Important Shit

Sometimes there's stuff that will be stressful to find in a pinch. Do you have a spare key to your car? Would you know where to find it if you needed it right now? Do you have a backup hard drive? Do you know where it is this second? Anything that is too big for the binder but that you want to have on hand quickly if you need it is a good candidate for the Backpack of Important Shit.