Tips to Organize Your Filing Cabinet

A filing cabinet is a great way to organize your office. Even in today’s digital age, there will always be some sort of paperwork that needs to be filed. Getting a cabinet to sort and store your papers is a giant leap in the right direction. However, just because you have a filing cabinet doesn’t mean you’re organized. In fact, disorganized file cabinets can make your office even more of a mess in the long run! Here are a few tips to help you find the files you need when you need them.

1.) Get the right kind of cabinet. You may not have realized it, but there are a lot of different styles of filing cabinets. There are flat files designed to store large-format documents like house plans and posters, lateral file cabinets that open lengthwise to increase usable area around the cabinet, mobile carts to help you take files to different locations in the office and more! Each cabinet has advantages and disadvantages – and are better suited for specific applications. The one you pick will depend on what kind of filing you need done.

2.) Choose how you want to organize your cabinet and stick with your system. Whether it’s alphabetical, or all of your bills go in one drawer and correspondence in another, organized by names, etc. keep the same system throughout your whole cabinet. Consistency is the key to keeping your cabinet organized.

3.) For an office filing cabinet, create separate drawers in your filing cabinets for official company files, personal work files, company information, your personnel information, current projects, and completed projects.

4.) To further aid in organization, color code your file folders to speed up retrieval time.

5.) Do not stuff your file folders past capacity. This makes it incredibly hard to find the papers you’re looking for. Consider splitting giant folders into several smaller sub-folders.

6.) Tab your hanging file folders with short, descriptive titles. Print your tabs in an easy to read font, or write legibly.

7.) Do not fill file cabinet drawers past capacity. If your drawers are too full, try weeding out garbage, putting older – but still important files in storage boxes, or getting another filing cabinet. Overstuffed drawers not only make it difficult to find what you’re looking for but can be hazardous to users.

8.) After you’re done with a file, put it back where you got it from. This keeps your file cabinet organized and easy to use.

9.) As you create your filing system, leave some room in each drawer for future files. If you don’t, you’ll either have to reorganize your entire cabinet, or you’ll have an unorganized system.

10.) Label the outside of each file cabinet drawer with a descriptive tag that lets you know what kinds of files you’ll find within.

11.) Avoid “Miscellaneous” files. When you’re feeling lazy, this is where everything ends up getting filed.

12.) Separate your “Action” and “Reference” files. Action files are the ones that require some sort of action to be taken. Either write a letter in response to mail, fill out forms, or submit important paperwork. Reference files are important, but can be put away and left alone. This includes information of completed projects, insurance information, payroll stubs, certificates, and financial information.

Now that you know how to organize your file system, you can look forward to an office that is the epitome of efficiency and productivity.

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