Do you have an admin system for your house which kicks butt ? I think my butt needs kicking.

[hub2dee]

OK. Have had enough of piles of paper and total admin disorganisation chez hub2dee. Need to get household paperwork under control.

We currently tend to pay bills on red reminders (great system), pay credit card a day late (crap system) - and then hassle them to remove late payment fees etc... am sure you get the picture.

Just wondered if any of you had 'systems' which worked... where / how do you file stuff ? When do you 'archive' the old crap ? Do you try and keep your filing close to the front door / living room / kitchen or hide it away in a study ? Where do you keep your folder of 'instruction leaflets for important appliances'... with the appliance, centralised, distributed in appliance-centric spaces (ie kitchen for kitchen white goods and living room for delicious hifi and AV bits etc. etc. ?

I routinely create piles of statements, piles of bills, old piles, new piles, tall piles, small piles, piles of piles etc. etc.

I am sick of it and want SLICK

(Erm... dw is sick of it too, poor woman, woops)...

Getting our car taxed involves tracking down insurance certificate, MOT, V5 reg doc etc. and inevitably takes days...

I was contemplating one file for:

BILLS, with dividers for Water / Gas / Elec / Rates / Mortgage etc.

one for:

STATEMENTS with dividers for Joint Account / Our Separate Accounts / Credit Cards etc.

(but this is where anarchy begins... aren't credit card statements actually bills IYSWIM ???)

So, what do you do, and does it work ?

Should I start a file for stuff relating to New Baby ? At the moment she has (thankfully) very little for us to organise (birth certificate, BUPA thingy, A Premium Bond certificate etc.) but I am under no illusion it won't grow...

Would be interested in how crap you (hopefully) all are, or IS IT JUST ME ? Does your system kick butt ?

Haven't read all the replies, but my filing cabinet has titles such as:

• driving licences
• birth/marriage certificates
• council tax
• mortgage stuff
• passports
• wills
• car - mawbroon
• car - pawbroon -life cover documents
• household insurance
• inland revenue
• separate drops for each bank account
• separate drops for BT, gas and electric

and so it goes on..... the secret is not to have too many categories shoved into the same drop as it makes it hard to find individual items.

On top of the filing cabinet is a set of three trays:

• in tray (things that need actioned go in here first)
• filing (for things that just need to be filed. eg bills as they are all on direct debit)
• pending (for things that need a reply before they can be actioned further)

and also a diary which I consult on a daily basis.

I go through the trays perhaps every couple of weeks. Anything that has a deadline for payment (normally only the credit card) will have been written in the diary on receipt. Anything that needs a reply will also be diaried and chased if no reply has been received within a realistic timescale.

I don't put junk mail into the in tray. It gets dealt with on a daily basis and shoved in the recycling (after removing my name/address for shredding). This way, I don't end up with an overflowing tray which makes for a daunting task.

Don't want to be smug here, but it works great for me and I have never been late or forgotten to pay anything. BUT I have done admin type jobs for a long time and it is just the way I would organise my work and it has spilled into my home life.

DH thinks it's great because he doesn't have to worry about the bills etc but when he needs to find anything, he can go straight to the filing cabinet and find it. One time not long after we moved, DH answered the door to the TV licensing people and was able to find our licence within a minute and written on it was the date/time which I had called the automated change of address system which the licensing people have. They were very impressed!

Where do you file your TV licence, mawbroon? I have big probs with that!

I haven't read what others here do... though I still might.

I have folders.

A children's folder. Dividers for things personal to whichever child (incl party invites), general school letters, extra curricular, health (Dr's, Optician, Dentist), Leaflets (offers for kids etc).

Then I have a household folder. Dividers for bills, guarantees, special offers, bank, takeaway menus.

I also have a folder for choosing a senior/secondarly school. However, I do have a second child going through the whole transfer business and DS1 goes to an all boys school so I need to keep the info for DD1 in one place.

It's fantastic! I get a piece of paper and I file it. Sometimes I even read it! lol

filing cabinet for paid bills, guarantees, birth certificates, dd1's info - kindy, therapy, medical etc.

routinely check through that and shred anything no longer needed.

bills to be paid go on a cork board in the kitchen which is next to calendar.

everything that can is paid by direct debit and then dh just checks our statements online - also has spreadsheet to track our spending.... ( spreadsheet unnecessary ...) We have a bank bank that has the online facility... so we can go into branch when needed but can do as much as possible online too.

Letters etc that needed dealing with get put in a document tray in the study and at the end of the week they get filed... takes a few minutes.

We have a file for each utility, bak files, credit card files etc... you get the pic. Yes we too do receipts attached to instructions/guarantee cards

Yes it is hard to get into the swing of it - but think of all the space you will have and the amazing sound of shredding no longer needed things.

Too many great ideas on here, so apologies if i repeat what someone else has suggested.

For appliance manuals (including instructions on how some of the toys come apart!), we have one of those large expanding wallets with alphabetised tabs - so camera goes under C etc. Still needs to be cleared out on a 5 year basis to get rid of all the appliances that we no longer own - but you will certainly find any manula in a lot less than 20 minutes! I also keep receipts for said items in this wallet too.

JanH - it is in the filing cabinet with a drop all of it's own labelled "TV licence"!!!

I also forgot to mention that all my receipts go on a spike and get checked against the online banking every few days. They are kept until the money has left the bank account then shredded, unless they are for an item under guarantee in which case the receipt is stapled to the front of the instuction manual and filed in the "instruction manual/guarantee" file!!

OMG I am so bloody anal!

Hoping for inspiration too - I bought a filing cabinet in the summer, but can't face the job of sorting through the piles to put stuff in said cabinet, sigh.

jodee, maybe you could just use it as a glorified charcoal BBQ ?

blimey, more insght into all your systems...

It seems the organised / adminy folk love their filing system, and can psychologically 'handle it'... I'm not sure I can....

Did all the people who swear by their filing system collect rubbers as children ??? Bet ya did.

mawbroon - I could probably find the TV licence fairly quick.. Third pile in the lounge, just up from the bottom, above the seed catalog which I can remember arrived around the same time.

Scary that some people have similarly complex systems for the children's filing. Yikes.

I think one of the unmentioned problems is that one needs to file / refile after something has been removed... I know I could create a drop file for birth / marriage certificates etc.. but I just know that if I were to grab the birth certificate to open a bank account, or whatever, for dd, it would linger somewhere in the kitchen for quite a while... possibly until we next needed it.

There is no hope for me... Just out of interest, were any of you VERY MESSY / have disorganised house systems and then start a system and stick to it, IYSWIM ? I think this might be one of those 'you either are or you aren't'...

Im guessing they were all born like it

Hub - I had a pretty rubbish system with one little concertina file. When I met DH he had nothing in place, so I got him a concertina file too. The we moved in together and had two concertina files and there was always the problem of where to file all the joint stuff. So it then became a bit messy and as soon as I was unable to stand not being able to find things any more, I went for the filing cabinet system. It's only a two drawer cabinet BTW and it sits next to the computer. Very unobtrusive.

used to be rather disorganised but once I started teaching and needed to store resources both at work and home within easy reach then started doing systems to make life easier.... In fact my mother used to bemoan my messiness as a child/teenager.

files for children - sure - our dd1 gets paperwork from the government, medical paperwork, the bank, school, kindy and so on.... need to keep it all organised or things would be hectic

I have a concertina fole which inevitably splits because I cram too much into it. How long are you supposed to keep the old crap for anyway?

love the coming together of two concertina files.

i am still incredibly messy and always have been, BUT, i have been in a relationship before i met my DH where he was also very disorganised and was in a lot of debt, ex had NO IDEA about any of it, apart from leaving stuff unopened for months and waiting for the bailiff. I couldnt live like it, so have learnt to be organised. It is possible, but it does take time!