Tip of the month

Let's Archive Some Papers!

Minding Your Matters® Organizing helps ARM people to deal with papers. There are three types of paper. A is for Archive. These are papers that you have to keep for legal reasons. They must be available if you need them, but not accessible enough that they should take up "prime real estate" in your space. R is for Reference. These are papers that you look at more frequently. You may refer to them on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. You should have a good way to house these papers, but they don't need to be "out and about" because they are only for reference. M is for Motion. These are papers that have some action attached to them. If you feel that papers that are out of sight are out of mind, you are probably referring to "motion papers" not reference or archive papers.

To determine document retention, please see Your Important Papers: What to Keep and Where. It is free and very useful.

Let's get into action!

First, find a location for your archive files.

Second, decide on a method for filing and housing these documents.

Third, get started!

Happy Archiving!

Note: This is part of a longer article from our free monthly ezine. If you would like to receive such articles in the future, please sign up here and receive 9 tips to increase order in your life plus the subscription, which you can discontinue at any time.

If you would like more monthly organizing tips, please visit Minding Your Matters companion website Get Organized This Year.

© 2010 Janice Russell