{"id":192,"date":"2011-09-30T04:41:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-30T04:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/?p=192"},"modified":"2021-11-17T11:21:14","modified_gmt":"2021-11-17T11:21:14","slug":"strategies-to-organizing-physical-documents-30-years-later-and-little-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/?p=192","title":{"rendered":"Strategies to organizing physical documents – 30 years later and little progress"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days ago I read a nice Lifehacker post<\/strong> ‘How Do I Organize My Piles of Paper Into Something Manageable?<\/a>‘. I find it interesting to read comments and see how are other people approaching this problem<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

\n

It’s only 1 of these categories
Action and trash
Action and archive
Archive
Trash <\/span><\/p>\n

It [solution] would have involved a match and the "something
\nmanageable" would have been a pile of ash. The management strategy
\nwould have been to brush the ash into a dustpan and dump the dustpan
\ninto a trash can. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Super Simple 2-Hole Punch Filing System<\/a><\/p>\n

a) Get an accordion file with 1 pocket. I use a different file for each year.
b) File paper docs, bills into it in the order they are received.<\/strong>
\n Statements, receipts are kept in the order-of-arrival. That is close
\nenough. Consumable cash receipts are trashed – never filled.
c)
\nBills + receipts for non-trivial items are entered into Quicken (or your
\n tool of choice). That’s the chief organizing database. There’s a date
\n for every record. <\/span><\/p>\n

Get yourself a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500. It makes
\nshort work of huge stacks of paper (something like 30 pages per minute,
\nboth sides), and comes with software to OCR it all.  <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’m a filer myself. I file everything in fascicles and folders in a few categories<\/strong> such as ‘bank stuff’, ‘insurance stuff’, ‘NHS stuff’, etc. Call me crazy, but I even filed all receipts from stores and match them to my bank statement. I don’t do it any more (saving just important receipts for warranties). The three main features of a filing systems need to be:<\/strong><\/p>\n