Office paperwork can quickly become overwhelming.
Office paperwork can quickly get out of hand. A few printed memos can easily turn into an unwieldy mound of paperwork that contains important reports, notifications, and other papers that you should have at your fingertips. Organizing office paperwork is not difficult but it does require that you adopt a system and use that system daily. Once you do this, your boss may very well remove the fire hazard sign from your door.
Put Paperwork in Binders
Binders come in handy when you need to organize large amounts of paperwork related to one topic. Use binders to organize materials from workshops and trainings, policy updates and other material to which you need easy access. Make it easy to organize your papers in binders by keeping a three-ring punch handy. Consider using the hole-punch feature on the copy machine for papers that you know you will need to keep if the feature is available.
Scan the Paperwork
Scanners can help you organize your paperwork by converting text and pictures to digital files. You can easily store these files on your computer, jump drive or server. This approach works especially well for minimalists who don’t want an office full of file cabinets. It is also a good solution for organizing paperwork that you know you have to keep but suspect you’ll never lay eyes on again.
Color code and Label Files
The file cabinet isn’t going away anytime soon. It remains a simple, easy way to quickly file papers. Finding the paperwork is not always as easy as filing it, however, as many people’s file cabinets appear to have had a brush with hurricane force winds. Keep your file cabinet organized by dividing your paperwork into categories. Designate a color for each category--for example, green is the logical choice for financial paperwork. Once you’ve color coded your files, label individual folders alphabetically so that you’ll be able to find paperwork at a glance.
File Paperwork Immediately
The trick to staying organized at the office isn’t always which organizational system you use but how often you use it. Designate a time every day to file papers. You may want to do it at the beginning of the day or right before you leave in the evening. Filing papers on a daily basis is much easier than confronting a foot-high stack of papers--you’ll never find the time if you let yourself get behind on your filing. Filing paperwork immediately will also make you appear much more organized as your desk will be uncluttered and you won’t have to search through stacks of paperwork to find last month’s financials.
Keep a Junk File
Junk files are an effective solution for papers that you simply can’t bring yourself to throw out. Perhaps you have a nagging suspicion that you’ll need it "someday" or you simply feel bad throwing out the attractive materials you received at the last seminar you attended. Toss the paperwork in the junk file-actually, you may need more than one--and forget about it. Once every few months, go through the junk file and put its contents in the trash. Anything you have decided that you really must keep can go into your permanent filing system.
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