How many standard filing cabinet drawers of life admin paperwork do you have?

[notnowmarmaduke]

I had 5. I have spent the day sorting and shredding and have got it down to 4 and a bit. That still seems a lot.

Insurance documents, receipts, instruction booklets, certificates of training, exam results, bank statements (only 6 months worth) loan agreements, work contracts. A few (very few) sentimental drawings and cards, payslips, a few records from years ago I am requited to keep for legal reasons. And so on and so on and so on.

I was hoping to get it down to about 2 or 3 and reclaim some space, but that has not happened.

What do you have? What should an adult have?

In the poll, all drawers are standard filing cabinet size.

4: One for me, one for DH, one for household, and one for DC.

Plus around 5 storage boxes of old paperwork (in 50s/60s so have been adults a while!)

None. I scan everything to Dropbox bar really important documents like birth certificates.

None. I have several folders in my bureau. One for house deeds etc & receipts for things like my front door. A medical one. A car one & an insurance one & a misc one. Theyre in my bureau & take up very little space. I cant imagine filling even one drawer let alone a whole filing cabinet

I haven't had a physical bank statement or payslip in years

I'm in my mid 50s too

O well, you are my age and have more than me, so I feel a little bit better

• can I please ask - when was the last time you sorted through it? Is it something you do, or don't do? Would you be able to put your hand on a piece of paper for example?

Like when I last applied for a job, I was asked to prove my claim that I had worked somewhere, and I knew I had my original contract somewhere, but it took literally days to find.

I've got it down to just two sparse drawers this year. It was my January declutter project. I think I will go back in the autumn and see what other bits can go.
Me and two dcs.

O yes, medical paperwork is taking up an entire drawer on its own....

wow, congratulations!

None. We have a big unwieldy and gravity-defying pile of old letters etc in the corner of our bedroom. There is another, slightly smaller one on the side in the kitchen.

😂

I have one small file case not anywhere near the size of a filing cabinet let alone 4!

4 filing cabinet drawers, not 4 filing cabinets! Then I really would lose the will....

I 'archive' to the plastic storage boxes one drawers start getting full. We get boxes that take the hanging files. So: old tax years with pay slips, tax coding, bank statements, etc; folders on a sold car, back years of water bills etc.

If you asked me how much I earned in 2001 I know where to go to find the box (under the eaves) and after some shifting furniture I could go more or less straight to it.

Certificates are in 'important docs' that stay in the filing drawers.

Some archive boxes are marked 'can be thrown in year xxxx'.

One small boarding school tuck box.
Files all labelled.
Regularly weed it.
No paper bank statements or insurance docs. That’s all on line.
That’s it.

4 filing cabinets, wtf?!!

I have one small box file with separators. I keep max 1 year of paperwork aside from anything super important like legal stuff or certificates. We have no medical records at all except the kids red books. I honestly don’t understand why some of you have so much filing in this paperless world!

how big is a boarding school tuck box compared to a standard filing cabinet drawer?

None, everything gets scanned and saved then paperwork gets shredded.

The only "paper" I keep are passports, driving licences, bank cards, and the original paper council tax and water rates bills for just the latest year. I keep the latter in case an official document is required for ID proof. So basically, everything in a single A4 folder.

filing cabinet drawers, not filing cabinets

I got rid of the filing cabinet and now all the paperwork thats not online is in a couple of shoe boxes.

All receipts, guarantees, instruction books etc are available electronically.

We just keep things like passports, car log books, vaccination cards for cats.

I couldn't cope with keeping everything online! I like paper records I can see and annotate.

My DPs have 8 filing drawers chock full. Plus some overflow piles. All very organised (if you understand Mum's system).

Two lever arch files - everything else is online.

None. One metal hopefully fireproof box for all crucial stuff. One magazine holder for instruction manuals. One lever arch folder. Anything I won’t need to provide the original of has been scanned and backed up to an external hard drive.

I have two drawers in the house which I prune when I’m feeling angry and tree drawers in the garage with stuff that DH will not checkout like maps from holidays taken when he was at uni. They are surplus to need and could go out full to the tip when we pop our clogs

We used to have a double drawer filing cabinet.... then we started moving countries. I am now expert at keeping what is actually important and shredding the rest. And opting to digital everything possible.

So in answer - one very small document holder that can fit in a large handbag with only the absolute essential docs.

Another small document divider that fits in a hand luggage with the rest.

Tree= 3
check = chuck
sorry