How to Organize File Cabinets?

Answer 1

Congratulations on purchasing file cabinets for your home. Now you’ve got to set them up and decide how to organize the voluminous records and documents in them. Let’s talk about how to apply some organization and a process to get those records in order for easy retrieval.

Assuming that you’ve already purchased the file cabinet, you now need to purchase file folders appropriate to the size of the drawers in your cabinet (letter size or legal size), file folder labels and possibly hanging file folders and hanging folder tabs.

One good, visual system is to use different colored folders for different categories. Red folders might contain bank statements while green folders might contain utility bills and brown folders, tax information.

Another way to organize your files is to divide them into sections based on category, and use file section dividers to separate them. A financial section might contain bank statements, loan documents, mortgage files and investments. An insurance section might contain separate folders for life, health, homeowners and automobile insurance policies.

This may sound trivial, but you need to establish a system for how you’re going to file paperwork in your files. Some systems put the tab on the back side of the hanging folder and some put the tab on the front side of the folder. Either way is fine, as long as it is consistent. If multiple people are going to be filing paperwork in the same cabinet, you want to make sure your system is consistent, so that someone doesn’t put papers in front of folders that they’re supposed to be putting behind folders.

File cabinets can tip over if you place all the files in the top drawer and leave the bottom drawer empty, so be sure to distribute the weight among the available drawers. When deciding in which drawers to place your files, first think about how often you’re going to be accessing those files. The files that you will use most often should go in an upper drawer, so that you don’t have to bend over as often to file or retrieve paper.

Although most people tend to organize their files alphabetically, you can choose to organize them by subject matter, color or by drawer. Again, there’s no right or wrong answer, as long as the system makes sense to you and you adhere to it.