Miniskirt Murder Bare Minimum Guide to Life #3

A reminder before I launch into this installment, which is bound to make the most organized readers totally cringe: the purpose of these posts is to get the job done, not perfectly, but in a fast, easy way that achieves the overall goal. So with that in mind, let’s look at how I organize my important papers so I can find them when I need them, and be left alone when I don’t.

If you want to spend “just a weekend” as the perky organizational experts on the web put it, stop here. If you have a mess on your hands and want to tackle it in one hour, keep reading.

I once worked at the world’s most disorganized law firm (very friendly people though). The files were in such disarray that at one point I think they just decided to give up filing altogether. This way, at least everything was in the mess pile, instead of half in the designated client folder, and half in the mess pile.

The most outstanding part of this system was the “chron box.” It was a banker’s box that sat next to the fax machine. Anytime a fax went in or out, the hard copies were dropped onto the top of the stack in the box, and the electronic scan was emailed to the responsible attorney. At the end of the month, we would label the box with the month and year, and off it would go to the storage closet.

In all seriousness, it was genius, especially because email was still sketchy for important stuff at the time (FuNnYcHiKk702@aol.com era). If a client called saying “Did you get this?” we could always be sure whether we did or not. Only the receptionist had access to the fax machine, and no document was excepted from this policy. A simple approximation of when they sent it would turn up the document (or not, if we didn’t get it). As bare minimum as it was, it constituted a record retention policy sufficient for our malpractice insurance because it was consistent.

I decided to apply this policy to my own life. Let’s proceed.

Imagine two boxes and a garbage can (I admit I do have a shredder). Box one (I refer to this one as the “married box”) will not end up requiring an entire box. It is for things that are not temporary, like marriage licenses, shot records, birth certificates, car titles, passports, etc. Box two (“just dating” box) is for things that are time dependent, as you’ll see below.

1. Letter from credit card company saying my limit has been raised. Shred.
2. Health insurance book/benefits information from work. Just dating. This crap is always getting updated, and I have never cracked one of these open anyway. The guilt of tossing it gets to me though.
3. Utility bill. Check that last month’s payment was received. If yes, pay and shred.
4. Fax confirmation showing I sent a letter cancelling my wine club membership I signed up for to get airline miles. Just dating. (And a good thing, too, because another charge appeared on my card that wasn’t supposed to. Out came my letter, which did not need to be sixteen files deep in a fancy organizational system to be at my fingertips. Bam.).
5. Credit card statement that lists something I plan to deduct on my taxes. Make a sticky note flag and put in box two. Just dating, but I’m going to see this one again.
6. Tax return. Married. (You should keep these for three years, unless you under-reported your income by more than 25%, in which case you should keep them for seven years and read up on how to plead the fifth).
7. Passport. Married.
8. Privacy policy from my bank. Shred. They’ll keep your info a secret unless they can’t, and there’s nothing you can do about it anyway.
9. Warranty for my refrigerator. Married. When that thing goes, and it will, I want my free replacement.
10. Letter offering employment. Just dating. Because who knows how long I’ll last. JUST KIDDING! But seriously, if you’re working there, that’s good enough. (If you have an actual employment contract, that would be box one. Not sure? Then you definitely don’t have one).

Here is the key, though. At the end of the year, after I take out stuff flagged for tax purposes, I can toss the rest of the box. Enough time will have gone by to know whether any issues had come up requiring the papers in that box. The benefit to this system is that it will accommodate whatever degree of anal retentiveness you may possess, because it is also coupled with a shred policy that is as strict or lenient as you make it. I might shred, you might date, but ultimately, the temporary stuff ends up in the trash, rather than sitting in your office space for eternity.

The stuff in the Married box can get stashed in a safe if you have one, or if not, in ziplocs in your freezer (if there is an actual burn-down-the-whole-house kind of fire, your expensive fireproof safes will be intact, but your documents will be a pile of ashes inside, so the freezer is just as good. Your stuff will turn to ash in there, too, but at least it’s free and already in your house. And maybe a thief wouldn’t be checking the freezer like he’s checking for a safe).

Before I sign off, a note that, for the most part, you can really get copies of stuff if you really, really had to- even the biggies like marriage licenses and green cards. The way less important stuff that you toss in the just dating box is definitely recoverable if the serious stuff is.

See you next week