Paperwork declutter and organising?

[Minieggmummy]

Be gentle with me please, I'm slowly chipping away at a clutter mountain. It's not been easy. The paperwork situation is a bit depressing, there's loads of it and I haven't found a system that works for my tired and possibly neurodivergent/peri brain.

I have a shredder, I have a filing box and some lever arch folders and some chocolate but it's just a swamp of paper hellll. I have very young DC and only a couple of hours a day of proper declutter time once they're down

Firstly - well done! We had a massive declutter this year and the worst bit was starting it and finding a system that works.

Not saying I have this right but I have a filing cabinet outside - realistically everything I need could easily fit in one drawer.

I have those plastic button folders that kids use for school and labelled the following
• pensions
• purchaees
• insurance policies
• birth certs and passports
• cards
• bathroom renovation

ETC I think there are 12 folders altogether

Most things are online now so do you really need to keep details of your car insurance policy from 2015-probably not.

Another thing I did which helped me throw away was write down on one sheet of A4 details of anything I thought I might need. Eg house insurance 2015 I wrote down the supplier and policy number and binned the policy itself as I knew I had all I needed to be able to find it in my emails if I needed to.

Keep chipping away and be brutal.

and hide the stash of reward chocolate :)

Rather than trying to shred it all yourself (a soul destroying five sheets at a time...), it might be worth paying for shredding service as a one-off?

I have four groups of documents:

• house purchase (deeds, solicitors, mortgage)
• house fixtures and fittings (invoices, guarantees, manuals) (if I moved, this would be the stuff that stayed with the house)
• personal belongings (receipts, guarantees, manuals)
• personal & bills (passport, birth cert, exam certs, car & house insurance, pets, utilities, etc).

I try to go thru each group once a year and ditch things that are no longer required.

I have two lever arch files and two Really Useful boxes with hanging suspension files.

Going forward go paperless and get everything via email. Just have separate folders in your in-box.
If you get paper payslips then ditch them once you have received the P60 for that year.

I did the same a few years ago, years and years of paperwork which was taking ages to shred (and the shredder kept getting jammed and overheating).

So instead I put all the paper in the bath, added water, let it soak and mashed it all up into smaller balls of wet paper. I'd recommend doing it inside a bucket instead of the bath, but it saved me so much time! Also went paperless whenever I could.

Now I have one box per year where I keep all paperwork for that year, I find that works a lot better than trying to separate car/house/bills stuff etc.

Good luck with your decluttering!

It was manageable in my pre-motherhood incarnation but throw in a couple of babies in short succession and the transition to back to work and study, and I was left with an unorganized mountain. I haven't even opened some of it, some is really annoying stuff like gardening catalogues from a random company that I ordered one gift from 5 years ago. I don't have a garden....

I will definitely look into a shredding service, there is absolutely only so many times you can mindfully shred 3 sheets (mine claims 8 sheets but it starts crying mutiny at 4!) this shredder is my needy third baby atm.

I'm at the stage where I'm chipping away with seemingly a small dent into it at the moment. I'm definitely going to try and go paperless, pp. I had a few false starts where I lost an hour trying to change my Tesco vouchers to online but the password and login merry-go-round defeated me after a hard day and I cried.

I feel like I'm not cracking this

Adulting is so hard 😭

really annoying stuff like gardening catalogues from a random company that I ordered one gift from 5 years ago. I don't have a garden

Step 1 - google the company's email address. Send them.a short email, please remove me from all your mailing lists with your name/address

Step 2 - bung into recycling. Does not need to be shredded.

Step 3 - forget that one. Onto the next.

Going completely paperless doesn't work for me. I prefer paper copies of bills, instruction manuals. I don't need paper copies of catalogues though!

100% this. One box a year is best. Trying to decide which folders things go into is too overwhelming - you end up with decision fatigue.

I created a password spreadsheet on excel. I record name of org, email address used, password, password format and date. I have nearly 100 listed. Could never remember that many.

@socialdilemmawhattodo that is very very insecure. There are free password manager apps that you can use eg logmeonce. They can be used to safely store password and apply them when you want to logon.

As it stands you are really vulnerable.

Re paperwork a couple of things

• if you have ever been through citizenship /residency applications ,are user you keep proof of you living here / working

/ paying taxes. The windrush people and others came a cropper with not being able to prove this.

Also I have an 'important documents' folder that I can grab if needed - has passports , birth certs, insurance certs etc in it.

I always tell clients to "weed" regularly. Keep the really important stuff you have to keep for ever in separate files, i.e/ house deeds, birth/marriage certificates, exam certificates, life insurance documents, etc that you'll never destroy. Then other "long term" things like house improvement documents (fensa certificates, kitchen/bathroom invoices, planning permissions, building regulations, and other longer guarantees such as 10 years for loft insulation or 5 years for the TV etc, and I say to keep year end P60s and pension paperwork for ever too (due to risk of authorities getting it wrong in decades to come). Everything else you can safely "weed" after a couple of years, i.e. bank statements, utility bills, etc. Day to day stuff like grocery and petrol receipts just keep a few weeks and then destroy.

I file a lot of things by tax year, as it makes it easy to clear out 7 years later.
So pay-slips, P60s, banks & credit card statements.

Then
house bills (council tax, water, electric etc),
purchases with guarantees,
car
very important documents (wills, certificates, etc)

I have a 1-31 concertina file for appointments or tickets etc. otherwise go online or take photos of things. I’ve got a “documents” folder in my photographs and keep ID such as passports, driving licences for easy access. Also letters that might come back to haunt me, e.g. PIP application/award etc. go through the paperwork regularly and bin anything no longer relevant. As for shredding, I do very little, only something showing credit card number for instance. Most of it can go in the recycling. Nothing bad has happened yet

In your situation, a few box files where you can just bung everything may be sufficient to start with. You can subdivide at another time if you feel so inclined. Just to have them safe will help.

Thank you. I'm a data manager. My method has worked very well for me for over 15 years. It's simple and effective. That is actually the core at so many data hacks - by making data access so complicated no normal person can ever deal with it timely and in real life. My biggest bugbear is IT people insisting on complicated solutions eg Authenticator apps or passwords with 16 characters+ that have to be changed everytime you breathe, or within 30 seconds. That IT driven policy is hindering people like my 90 year old mum or my child with learning needs to be able to cope with IT. That isn't OK. So I will continue with my password spreadsheet and so will they.

Automatically shredding everything after 7 years is a risk. There are good reasons to keep P60s forever and maybe some bank statements if they show major transactions.

Agree. I 'clear out' to a box under the eaves.
But I know that if we move or die unexpectedly whole folders can be binned or skimmed through with ease.

I suggest keeping all P45s too. I am currently trying to prove my length of service in the NHS and the P60s aren’t enough. They want P45s plus a full suite of payslips from the 1980s - so only provided in paper form not electronic.
I am now saving my electronic pay slips too.

Thank you, I am still wading through, the "big" stuff is easier (p45/60 etc) as that's a clear "keep" and there aren't so many of them.

In the mix is my SEN kiddos art and homework, school paperwork (so much!) and it's adding to the decision fatigue.

There's some stuff like car seat instructions and things like that, that seem innocent enough just lying on the paperwork mountain, but you never know it that's the one thing you actually end up needing and it all adds up and before you know it, you're just considering turning the lot into papier mache and crafting with it for the next million years

And then sometimes I get random documents in there that are emotional (divorce/bereavement/health etc) and it makes me very unproductive and overwhelmed 😢

I'm not naturally organised and it's killing me labelling and filing. I'm clean and tidy but organising nooo 🫠

Keeping instructions can help you get better prices for when you come to sell things on eBay etc, even more if you can keep the box too! Especially for things like prams, car seats etc that can have a good resale value if in good condition.

I have a shredder and I buy a box file per year. Anything that needs kept just goes in this year’s box file. It’s not a perfect system but I am really pushed for time and this means it’s all in one place at least.

I scanned a lot of documents and email them to myself.
i also do the one box per year after reading it on here.
shredding wise sometimes only the confidential information is only on a small bit of a document so I just tear that off and shred that bit. It cuts down enormously the amount of shredding.

Thank you, I'm writing all this down (it's how I learn best) so I'm thinking of setting a timer for 15 mins tonight and then 30 mins each eve to crack on once I've got my method nailed down?

I just want to buy a feckton (Irish measurement!) of pretty stationery and pretend I'm getting on with it.

I have resisted and ordered a functional concertina box file.

I can't do more than 15 mins today in this heat because it won't just be the shredder that overheats!

This is what I do! Shred the bit with name address and policy number, recycle the generic rest.

Thank you both pps that's such a brilliant idea, also saves on emptying the shreddy bin every 5 mins x