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[GCR18]

I bet it feels good to be done.

[151949]

I have one drawer of owners manuels & operators instructons for appliances etc. Most came with the house. And one drawer of everything else I save - paper wise - like insurance policies, 7 years of income tax returns , various pother misc. papers. For the most part I do not save any bills once they are paid they are shredded.I do keep a small notebook where I record bills paid, check # if pd by check, date paid and amount paid. I'm not a paper hoarder.

[Mominohio]

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@hoosieroriginal wrote:

@Mominohio Can I ask where you got file cabinet?  It's really nice looking - does just look like an end table.  Thanks.

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@hoosieroriginal

I got this from a furniture store in Sugarcreek Ohio, Andreas Furniture. I'm sorry I can't tell you the manufacturer's name, as I already disposed of the paperwork for it (trying not to keep things we don't need!!)

I went to their showroom, and didn't care for what they had in stock, and simply ordered this out of a catalog with a small picture. I don't usually do that, especially as expensive as these wood file cabinets are. I usually like to see it first. But we have done business with this company for over 20 years and they are great. I was really happy with it when it came.

To those mentioning having warranty and information booklets to appliances and such.....I have found that most of that stuff is saved for nothing. Of course if you have a warranty, you want that information kept until the warranty expires, but most of the stuff that comes with an appliance is useless after you are familiar with the product. Most of them no longer come with parts lists (back in the day, this information was very handy for those like my husband who can do our repairs as long as he has parts information). All the information about contacting the company or certified service centers etc. is now available online.

I dumped most of those things, unless they did indeed contain diagrams of the parts and the way the item was put together, or contained a parts list with actual part numbers. The booklets and information about appliances that we know we will just replace when they go (old enough to not be worth fixing, or too new and electronic to fix economically) were dumped as well.

I did have a huge accordian file stuffed with things like this, and that is with cleaning it out every couple of years and removing the stuff we no longer owned. I managed to narrow it down to less than one half of one drawer in the new cabinet.

And I've taken on the mindset that if things come with a one year warranty, are under $100 and fail, I'm most likely not going to file on that warranty. Usually the customer is responsible for paying the shipping to return the product to the manufacturer, waiting for a judgement on the item, then often responsible for the shipping to get the repaired or replaced item back to you. When that is the way the warranty works for those less expensive items, I'm no longer messing with the hassle of it all, and disposing of the paperwork from the beginning.

[Mominohio]

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@software wrote:

 My paperwork fills 2, 4-drawer file cabinets!

1 drawer for tax returns

1 drawer for receipts & user manuals

1 drawer for contracts, legal documents.

1 drawer for computer supplies, paper, ink, etc

I drawer for insurance documents & booklets

and on & on

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I could have easily done a couple of cabinets @software, but I decided to streamline!

I guess for full disclosure, I should note that our most important papers (wills, life insurance policies, birth and death records, deeds to property, car titles, social security cards etc.) are in two small folders in the safe. The kind of papers that you would grab to evacuate in a hurricane or wild fire etc. I feel so much better since we got a large safe, with a good fire rating, to know that those important things are protected not only from theft, but fire should that happen.

I would have needed probably one more drawer to hold those type of things.

[Mominohio]

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@chickenbutt wrote:

I like the cabinet, too, and the bird!  

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@chickenbutt

The bird is a candle from Swan Creek Candle (ceramic bird with candle inside). I got it a couple of years ago, but they might still have them on their website.

[Mominohio]

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@GCR18 wrote:

I bet it feels good to be done.

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@GCR18

Yes it does! Although I still have one stack of paper I'm undecided about, it is in the burn bin and by the next time we burn, I haven't needed it, it will go as well!

This was one of those projects that I did every other year or so (go through the files, and purge), and everything was very neat, orderly, categorized, and arranged by dates. But I knew there was just way more than we needed to be keeping. Check stubs from work for the last 10 years, old medical EOB's, old bank statements going back a decade....it was just way too much.

I went up to my mom's house and did the same purge for her (although hers was much less) and it makes her feel better to know she (we) is keeping up on having her papers streamlined so when she passes, I'm not stuck going through decades worth of useless papers.

[Mominohio]

As a side note, the "picture" on the file cabinet is actually old receipts from the 1800's (hand written and in that great script handwriting they used to have) arranged in an old frame. I found it at a thrift store and picked it up for a couple of dollars.

They are actual receipts, not a print. I occasionally have to take the frame apart and realign the individual receipts as they tend to 'move' and become askew.

[software]

I need to PURGE.

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@Mominohio wrote:

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@software wrote:

 My paperwork fills 2, 4-drawer file cabinets!

1 drawer for tax returns

1 drawer for receipts & user manuals

1 drawer for contracts, legal documents.

1 drawer for computer supplies, paper, ink, etc

I drawer for insurance documents & booklets

and on & on

---

I could have easily done a couple of cabinets @software, but I decided to streamline!

I guess for full disclosure, I should note that our most important papers (wills, life insurance policies, birth and death records, deeds to property, car titles, social security cards etc.) are in two small folders in the safe. The kind of papers that you would grab to evacuate in a hurricane or wild fire etc. I feel so much better since we got a large safe, with a good fire rating, to know that those important things are protected not only from theft, but fire should that happen.

I would have needed probably one more drawer to hold those type of things.

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