How I organised my past work papers (Mar. 2021)

WRITTEN by CHRISTINA TAYLOR

Over the past 10 years, I have lived in seven different rental properties.  Until it needed to be packed, I did not realise how much ‘stuff’ I actually had.  

I very much wanted to get some control over the pieces of paper I had accumulated over the years.  As a starting point, I decided to tackle papers accumulated from my most recent employer, and create a process to minimise these.  Here it is:

 

1.      Centralise

Firstly, I needed to find all physical pieces of paper relating to that employer.  That was the easy part, as I had always kept a dedicated box for everything related to that employer. 

 

2.      Categorise

I went through every piece of paper in this dedicated box.  I assigned each paper a category name, such as: 

 

• client engagements

• course – foundation level, completed August 2018
• course material – courses yet to be completed
• employment contract

• leave records

• notebooks
• payslips
• performance reviews

• sample of work

 

I wrote each category name down on a post-it note, attached it to a manila folder and put the corresponding papers inside.  Each category became a folder name. 

 

3.      Analyse

I placed all folders into their dedicated box, with notebooks at the front and any training course material at the back.  Any folders in between were roughly sorted by date, with the oldest date towards the back of the box. 

Now that all papers were organised, I decided to delve into each folder and decide which papers I actually needed to keep, starting with the oldest training course material, as that would be easiest to part with.  Knowing this would be a time-consuming process, I assigned myself 45-60 minutes per day (Monday-Friday) to work on completing this task.  I completed analysing all course material folders, then worked my way through the box from back to front, leaving the notebooks full of my hand-written notes until last, as I knew they would be the most time-consuming. 

For each piece of paper, I considered the following:  

• do I already have an electronic copy of this

• do I need to keep this paper for taxation purposes

• does this paper belong elsewhere

• for what reason would I ever refer back to this paper

• is a newer version of this course material available online

After analysing each piece of paper, I decided on one of three groups for it.  Here are the three groups that I used:

• definitely keep

• items that I decided I may need in the near future included papers that:

• I will need to refer to in the future

• I will need to keep for five years, for taxation purposes

 

• don’t need

• this pile included papers that: 

• are available online

• I already have an electronic copy of

• I will never need to refer to again

• are no longer the current version

• training material for products that no longer exist

 

• belongs elsewhere

• papers that are not related to this employer, so need to be filed elsewhere

4.      Purge

After completing the allocated 45-60 minutes of analysing per day, I processed the pile of ‘don’t need’ papers into three different groups:

• shred – any papers that had confidential information on both sides

 

• reuse – papers that had confidential information on one side but were blank on the other side, can be used as scrap paper

 

• council recycle – papers that were either blank or had non-confidential information

To complete this purging step, I shred the papers from the first group, added the scrap papers to my existing scrap paper collection and placed papers for recycling into our dedicated recycling box, which we empty regularly into our council recycling bin for collection.  The shredded paper also goes into our council recycling bin. 

Each day I experienced a feeling of relief and accomplishment, once completing this purge step.  So much paper went through my shredder that it broke and I needed to buy a new one!  The visible progress I made with organising the papers from my most recent employer was so satisfying that I decided to repeat this process for papers relating to all of my past employers. 

 

5.      Finalise

The final step for me was to process the papers that I had decided to keep (for now). 

For anything belonging to the ‘definitely keep’ group, I sorted the contents of each folder by date, placing oldest papers at the back of each folder.  I then placed the folders into a newly purchased archive box, sorted by date, with the oldest folder at the back.  On the post-it-note for each folder, I wrote the date that I completed ‘cleaning out’ that folder.  Similarly, I attached a post-it-note to each notebook with this information. 

I reviewed each paper in the ‘belongs elsewhere’ pile, and put a post-it-note on each, with the name of the folder it belongs to, such as:

 

• 2018 book material
• 2019 book material
• art 

• car

• editing required for ‘Faking Fearlessness’ book
• finances
• fun

• health – general
• health – mental health

• rental properties
• tax returns

 

 Once completed, I filed each paper in its corresponding folder.

6.      Annual review

During the next 12 months, if I refer to a folder in this archive box, I will write a note on that folder of the date that I visited it.  For now, some papers I have decided to keep include some past completed course material, and course material for courses that I may be interested in completing in the future. 

I have set a date for 12 months in the future when I will set aside some time to review all folders in this archive box.  If I am working in the same industry, I will only keep folders that I have actually needed to refer to during the previous 12 months, or papers that I still need to keep for taxation purposes. 

If I have not visited a folder during this 12-month period, it is very unlikely that I will ever need to visit it in the future, so I will purge those papers.