Help me with a filing cabinet sort out!

[StealthPolarBear]

Am in a sort and organise mood today so going to take advantage of it and sort out the filing cabinet which is a mess!

Any helpful suggestions welcomed, categories:

banking
insurance
cars
house

etc...

would you put car insurance documents with car stuff or with 'insurance'?
How long do you keep things? My own opinon is a financial year for things like bank statements and CC statements, and only the most current for things like insurance policies (as the new one invalidates the old) - does that seem reasonable?
What about things like mortgage statements - all of them?

Any tips gratefully accepted as I hate this stuff!

Personally, I keep all insurance stuff together.

Regarding how long to keep, I've been advised by an accountant that it is 7 years....which seems an awfully long time.

7 years
this is just all personal stuff, no business
oops

I do it by company and then by category; that way if you change banks or savings account you don't have to go through loads of old stuff.

So I have:

Bank 1 savings account 1
Bank 1 current account 1
Bank 1 credit card 1

Bank 2 saving account 2

Insurance co 1 house insurance
Insurance co 2 car insurance

utility co gas
utility co electric

etc

Another great tip is not to bother filing by date. Just lob it into the file for the relevant section. If you use fairly distinct files as above, then it isn't too difficult to find the relevant bit of paper when the time comes because you will be incentivised in some way to find it!

I like to keep stuff for 5-6 years. When the 'working' file gets too full, then I 'archive' stuff - i.e. get a big lever arch file, put the stuff in with an A4 page as a divider and put it in the loft. There if you need it, not in the way of you don't. I am a lawyer though so may be taking this side of things to extremes

wow that's radical, will have to think about that...
although thinking about it we have a mix of that so "Insurance" and "natwest" and "BT"
DH and his weird systems
Also like the idea of not worrying about date - you're right, most of the time we end up searching the entire cabinet, so this would be loads easier than that

Yes the great thing about filing without the date is that it makes it easier to file stuff - which means you're more likely to do it and so when you go to find it it'll be easier. Perfect filing systems don't exist. What you want is one that is easy to put stuff into and not too difficult to get stuff out of.