I’d intended to write up my wild and crazy adventures practicing driving in the snow, but it turns out our friend was otherwise engaged this afternoon and wasn’t able to make it over to teach me.
So, I spent the day getting our filing in order.
Before we moved from Texas, a friend of ours tried to ‘help’ do some of the filing. I wasn’t at home at the time or I wouldn’t have let this travesty happen. She found our category system ‘too confusing’ so she re-organized all the folders alphabetically. Mostly.
Grrrrrr.
I’ve not been able to find anything since.
Since we weren’t going anywhere today, due to snow on the ground, I tackled getting our filing organized. We have a big stack of things that have been building up and it was about high time I did something about it anyway.
I mostly have the folders set up and organized the way I want them, but I do need to get the labels on them properly.
The secret to my system is the individual contents. Say for instance, we get an electric bill every month. Yes, I’m a barbarian and don’t sign up for e-notifications. I find they are often too easily overlooked or read and ignored when they come into my email inbox. Paper, analog notices are sitting there staring at me making me pay attention to them until I pay them.
My thing is to save the envelope the electric bill is sent in. When I pay it I write the date it was paid, what account it was paid from and any other relevant information, on the bill, then put it in the envelope. Each month I do the same thing, but I put all the bills from the year in the same envelope. At the end of the year I have everything for the electric company in one place. That envelope goes in the Utilities folder. Simple and easy.
My biggest problem is that the wife HATES envelopes. If she opens a bill she tosses the envelope. If I’ve already got an envelope for that set of bills, great, but if not it might take me a month (usually more) to get one to keep everything together.
I got through most of the stuff in the filing pile. There are always a few items that I don’t know what to do with as they don’t easily fall within my category system. I’ll get it figured out.
Never let anyone else touch your filing system, my Hordeling. It can be devastating.
If you’d like to support my efforts, why not buy me a chocolate chip cookie through my Ko-Fi page? https://ko-fi.com/jhusum
I’m kinda weird. I don’t use electric or paper reminders. Apparently, most people need some kind of monthly reminder. I just pay my bills each month. This may mean I’m smart. I think it’s far more likely that I’m obsessive-compulsive about my bills.
You have heard me say this before, but I think your filing system is crazy. It is top-heavy, labor intensive, and designed, for the most part, to keep track of useless trivia that no one should care about (come to think of it, it’s a lot like my cataloging system that way).
BUT
It’s YOUR system, and it works for YOU, and that’s all that really matters. You are 100% right – don’t let anyone else mess with you filing system.