Systematic organisation: an expert explains how to organise important documents permanently

We rarely have arguments in our house. But when we do yell about something, it’s usually lost documents. So I prefer to have all the important papers stored in my own home so that I know where they are, but most importantly, so that I can navigate through them and find everything I need immediately. Sometimes it’s tricky, a lot of documents pass through one’s hands in life. But there are tips or even professional advice on how to handle organization easily.

I keep my documents in one box, however, I have them sorted in folders by date. Since I can remember which documents were dealt with in which year, it doesn’t make it difficult to track down specific purchase contracts or, for example, receipts for a claim. But I know that in many of my friends’ homes, document organization is a big problem. What advice does an expert give?

Forget the complexities

When people organize their materials into folders, they usually make one big mistake. They sort their important papers too intricately. A friend of mine has documents at home sorted by year and month. But some of his folders are empty and just take up space in his home unnecessarily. Another friend files important papers in coloured folders, depending on whether they are contracts, invoices or other documents. I don’t find that ideal either.

“Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Albert Einstein famously came up with this wisdom many years ago. This quote is commonly used by professionals in IT, information management and systems design as a principle for minimizing unnecessary complexity that harms rather than helps users and organizations. If you are sorting documents, you should simply do it in a clear way, but not in an unnecessarily complex way.

Practical tips for sorting documents

If you want to sort documents, you should do it either by document type or by date. Some people think it is ideal to keep all documents relating to one topic together, so for example, sales contracts in one folder, electricity invoices in another, gas invoices in another. Personally, I prefer to sort by month: in one folder I have invoices and documents for January, in another for February, in a third for March,…

You can sort the documents into coloured folders or into transparent sheets, where you can immediately see what each pile relates to. It’s a good idea to have a label stuck on each folder that describes in general terms what you’ll find in it, but also more specific information (in bullet points). Try not to have subfolders in folders, as this usually already means unnecessary sorting, which only complicates things.