How to organize personal files at home

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Learn more in our affiliate disclosure. Not necessarily. A quick Swedish death cleaning of your digital files has many benefits. Organized digital photos and documents have a positive impact on your productivity and can potentially save your relatives precious time when sorting through your digital afterlife for archival purposes.

Post-planning tip: If you are the executor for a deceased loved one, handling the details of their unfinished business such as organizing photos can be overwhelming without a way to structure your process. We have a post-loss checklist that will help you ensure that your loved one's family, estate, and other affairs are taken care of. What's the importance of organizing your computer files in the first place? Whether you're just starting to organize key documents, or you're hoping to optimize your life, this is a must-do for anyone in the digital age.

Life is becoming more and more digital. In addition, death is becoming digital. Virtual funerals with GatheringUs are the new normal, and people are memorializing their loved ones with photos and accounts online. Organizing your computer files is the first step. Structuring your computer files is an important step to increase productivity, cut down on stress, and make your files easy to find.

Here are several best practices to use to make your computer neat, organized, and clutter-free. The documents folder is a folder local to your computer alone. That means that if you leave your computer at home while on a business trip, you have no way of accessing the files you need. Computer crashes? The folder and everything in it is gone.

Water spills on your keyboard and fries the internal hard drive? Folder destroyed. Prevent the loss of files and provide yourself universal access by managing your entire file folder system from within a shareable drive. When first setting up a filing system, establish categories to place all other files and folders in. Then, within each of those umbrella folders, you can place other items accordingly.

Always keep business and personal items separate. Develop subfolders for major categories in your personal and business folders.

When it comes to organization, subfolders are your friend. Within each of those, organize them by date. Pictures and financial documents can both be organized by year, for example.

Resist this temptation as much as possible. When it comes to your computer, there should be a place for everything, and everything should be in its place. If you need a file on the desktop because you use it so frequently, then create a desktop shortcut for that file, but keep the file in its proper location. A cluttered and messy desktop is the last thing you need to maintain a tidy, productive life. Or designate someone on your team as the go-to person for all file-organizing questions.

Encourage people to ask first, rather than possibly saving something in the wrong place. Check in with your team by to see whether your organization system is working and adjust as necessary.

Finally, congratulate yourself on finishing a daunting project that will save your organization a lot of time! Communicate and collaborate on files with a free group chat app , or get started right away with a comprehensive suite of business apps to help you stay organized. The Microsoft team is focused on sharing resources to help you start, run, and grow your business.

Business Insights and Ideas does not constitute professional tax or financial advice. You should contact your own tax or financial professional to discuss your situation.. Microsoft Team. Set goals for digital file organization Organizing digital files can take over your life if you let it, so start by getting specific about what you want to accomplish. Start by asking who, when, and how: Who needs to understand your digital file organization system?

When will you start this, and how much time can you spend? Prepare and get input Talk to the leadership team at your organization so you understand their priorities. Here are a few questions to start with: What do they like and dislike about the current computer file organization system?

What are their suggestions for how to organize digital files? Supplies: Paper and pen for jotting down notes or reminders optional. Time: At least two hours, unless you have very few files.

Organizing by date Best for: Organizations with large amounts of files tied to time periods, like a financial services business. Organizing by project Best for: Organizations with lots of cross-departmental collaboration—for example, a project manager, writer, and graphic designer work together on every project. Be prepared for this by regularly backing up your files to an online backup service, CDs, or an external hard drive. Be sure to label these storage devices as clearly as you have labeled your files.

Part 4. Keep up with your system. After you've created your filling system, you'll want to keep using it as you intended. Getting too far behind, ignoring items that need to be filed or improperly filing items can all undo the hard work you've put in. Make sure you're keeping up with your filing system to keep it working for you. Don't neglect filing your active documents away in your archival document storage. Remove old files. Some files are necessary to store away for a long period of time.

However, your filing system will be finite in size and will require you to regularly remove files that are no longer needed. Regular weeding of your file system will help keep that system in order and functioning properly. Old budgets, financial statements or annual policies may need to be stored for only one year. Removing old files will create space for incoming documents. Getting rid of files that are not necessary will make it easier to find documents that you do need.

The same goes for electronic files. Delete any duplicate, obsolete, or unnecessary documents from previous projects. Archive old electronic files. Old files that are still relevant or may one day be referred back to can be archived.

This means storing them away from your standard filing system but keeping them organized and accessible. Consider setting up an additional broad category for archived files. Move unused files to this folder with their subfolder formatting intact. If you want to keep archived files out of the way on your file screen, try placing a "z" in front of the file name so that it goes to the bottom of your alphabetic file order.

Streamline your filing system. Getting your files in order and keeping them that way can both be helpful when it comes to your personal organizing. However, there will always be room for improvement in your filing system. As you continue working with your filing system, keep an eye out for any improvements that you can make to help make it even more effective.

Categories that seem to be overly used may need to be broken down into smaller categories. Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered.

You Might Also Like How to. How to. More References About This Article. Co-authored by:. Co-authors: Updated: January 2, Categories: Personal Organization. Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 79, times.

Reader Success Stories G. Bane Dec 28, The simplest approach is the one most likely to work. Don't forget to give a copy of your vital records to your adult kids or the executor of your will. More reader stories Hide reader stories. You may be asking yourself if you can go paperless and store some documents digitally only. Digital storage is a good backup for important documents.

It's easier to search your computer files by name to locate them quickly. But you will still need to keep the original copies of most of your paperwork. Scan financial records, tax returns , contracts, bills and receipts and even key personal documents like passports and birth and death certificates to have an easily retrievable copy.

But once you store these digital copies in the cloud, an external hard drive or a DMS document management system , you'll still need to safely file and store the originals.

To avoid drowning in a river of paper, set up a system for organizing and storing important documents as part of settling into your new home. Here are some tips to get you started. The first step may be the most tedious, but also the most important — get all your documents in one place so you can file and safely store them. Examples of the types of home-related records and other papers you should put together include:. Home inspection report;.

Home and product warranties for systems like the water heater, furnace and major appliances;. As long as you are gathering important documents from your home purchase to organize and file, consider taking this opportunity to assemble other documents you may want to keep in a safe and easily accessible spot.

Here's a good checklist:. Once you've gathered all your home purchasing and other documents in one place, take some time to sort through them. Divide them into stacks based on order of importance, with things like birth certificates, social security cards and property deeds taking top spot and old tax records and transcripts set to the side. Then take a hard look at these low-priority mountains of paper and shred and toss what you can to eliminate clutter.

Paperwork that has overstayed its welcome includes:. Your culled stacks of paperwork can now be organized in a way that makes finding a specific document in the future fast and intuitive. This may be alphabetical or chronological, although most people find that filing paperwork by subject makes the most sense. So personal records all go in one file, banking records in another, home purchasing documents in a third, and so on.

Consider adopting a color-coded system to group related documents. With this system, you can find the general category of document you are looking for at a glance but avoid the problem of over-stuffing a single file folder with hundreds of sheets of paper. Assign a primary color to a category of files red for home-related, for example , with the most important documents in that category in the brightest folder home inspection report, property deed.