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One thing that is always tough to keep organized is papers. Odds are you have a lot of different papers in your home. Some may be personal, while others may be work or business related. Still others may include tax documents and bills. Organizing your important papers is a challenge, but not an insurmountable one by any means. You do not necessarily need to go investing in an expensive filing cabinet just to organize your personal papers either; a set of plastic bins can work very well.

One of the best home paperwork storage ideas is to set up an area of your house which is specifically dedicated to paperwork. If you have a home office, this is the perfect place to store paperwork relating to business, work, taxes, and bills. For personal papers, you can choose the same area of your home if you wish, or you can store them somewhere that feels more personal (such as a bedroom—or if you access them very rarely, perhaps an attic or storage closet). If you are also trying to come up with an organization system for other members of your household, they can each organize and store their own personal papers in their rooms (children’s school papers and artwork, for example).

If you do have a filing cabinet, your file folders are perfect for information which you need to store by date. Even if you don’t, though, you can always come up with a date-based system for filing papers in clear plastic bins. Generally it is wise to save several years worth of old receipts and bills, so you can purchase three bins and label them by year. Every New Year, you can cycle back to the oldest bin and change the date, emptying out the old receipts you no longer need. You can have a separate bin for old tax returns. For your mail, you can have an incoming bin and an outgoing bin.

Bins are also perfect for sorting personal papers, especially for children, who tend to accumulate a lot of special papers from school, awards, artwork and cards. If your children have a lot of papers, you can provide several bins for different purposes. Your child can store artwork in one bin, cards and keepsakes in another, and reserve a third for school papers and awards. This keeps your children from cluttering up their drawers or allowing their papers to float around the house.

It is not as challenging to come up with home paperwork storage solutions as you think it is. Once you take stock of your needs, you will know how many bins you need to purchase. Label them neatly and clearly, and try to consolidate the paperwork which relates to bills and business. Remember to file incoming mail and documents right away so that you do not accumulate new piles of loose paperwork. Make the system as easy to use as possible, and you will achieve the highest level of organization in your home!