What do you, my loyal readers, do with all your files and other important paperwork? When I moved into my apartment, I bought a small, knee-high filing cabinet for all my paperwork. I keep all my financial documents like tax stuff, mortgage, pay statements, and banking info in this cabinet. Over the year, this cabinet is now bursting at the seams. It’s gotten to the point where I just stack all my new papers and files on top of the cabinet where it forms this precarious Jenga-like structure. Clearly, this isn’t a permanent solution.
I was thinking about getting a much larger three drawer vertical filing cabinet. This would cost me over $150 at Ikea and even more at Staples. The cheaper and possibly more efficient way to solve this is to buy a couple of bankers boxes. This would be a more modular solution. Where do you keep all your paperwork?
Unless they are documents like my mortgage papers, RRSP docs, school accreditations, birth cert. etc. I review and then shred my unnecessary papers after about a year of having them.
I shred a lot, and scan items I may need for reference but won’t need an original. I do the scanning in large batches once per year or so. I also use electronic billing or epost to get electronic copies of bills in the first place.
Hmmm… I don’t think I’ve shredded or scanned any of my important documents since I moved into my apartment. Maybe that’s why I have a mountain of paper.