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.

We have one of these and use 6 drawers of it, labelled house, cars, tax, etc.

www.ryman.co.uk/bisley-10-drawer-desktop-cabinet-23?&utm_campaign=20504204568&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADvShRxz_35fZb_V1VpwDeETQEVLN&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIw7KG5ZimhwMVyqJQBh2bcQRaEAQYBSABEgJbO_D_BwE

Some will have more paperwork than others, if you have shares and stuff like that some of it might be on paper and has to be kept for tax purposes.

well, yeah, I have one and a half drawers which are non negotiable really, need to be kept for legal reasons etc. But am determined to get it down to three drawers in total today - !

I have 9 box files - 1 per year for the last 7 years of paperwork. The oldest one gets shredded each January and becomes the current one. Plus 1 for manuals and one for birth certificates, passports, medical letters etc.

As the years go by, there's more on emails than hard copy and that's all saved and backed up.

@Stravaig I used those really useful boxes for archiving. Makes life so easy.

I have one expanding box file that isn't even full! I have very little physical paperwork for anything.

You do still need to have original paper copies of official certs etc but recently after having to complete probate and a house sale for a family member, it made me realise the need to keep a secure list of accounts passwords etc. We were unable to access our relatives phone/laptop so unable to contact wider friends and found utility company accounts tricky when we had no access to her online accounts 😪
Forewarned is forearmed

Our son left Uni last year and moved to a different city for work. His tenancy agreements and employment contracts were all e-signed online with no physical paperwork. He didn't need to provide any physical paperwork to prove anything to anyone, no payslips, no P60s, no bank statements, no passport nor photo driving licence - all ID checks etc done online with uploaded document scans as necessary.

We've got his school exam certificates and his graduation certificate - he needed neither for his first "proper" job at one of the UK's biggest insurance firms - all they wanted were scans of them uploaded to their "onboarding" online portal along with scans/photos of his passport and photo driving licence - likewise they wanted nothing "physical" at all.

Same when he's been opening bank and credit card accounts - he's gone with 100% online only banks so again everything done online direct from his iphone!

So neither his new employer nor landlord nor banks wanting any physical "papers" and not providing him with anything physical either.

Zero. I wouldn't have space for it.

There's six of us and we have one lever arch folder. I can't imagine having so much paperwork I would need a cabinet!

A lot of our house stuff isn’t online like Fensa, building control, a large wad of electrical certificates, stuff like that

Just scan them to your computer/dropbox and shred them.