organizing paperwork

Is it just me or are there way too many paper documents in our lives? I mean, we're trying to keep the earth beautiful and go green but yet, we still have too many papers.

In addition to some home improvements and decorating, I'm trying to reduce paperwork in our home. I've been recruiting hubby to assist me in this job. He's definitely a good helper when I come across documents in Arabic. Although, I can read and write Arabic, I'm still not considered fluent so I don't want to throw anything important. I'm not afraid to admit that I've been loving all of this purging of unnecessary papers. The paper shredder has overheated several times in the past couple of weeks. I just don't want to end up like this...

Ok, yeah, maybe a bit dramatic. But I could totally end up having nightmares about something like this. I'm weird like that. I just have one simple goal. To have all paperwork organized in a way that it is easy to find. If I need to find a certain certificate from work, I want to be able to look in my work binder under the certificate tab. If I need little guy's medical report from when he was one (which I probably won't, but still...), I want to look in the medical binder, under the little guy tab. If hubby needs a copy of my passport to renew my ID, I want to be able to find it in it's place as well. See? It's not all that complicated. It'll just take some time and effort.

I recently went to the local bookstore and had fun loading up on file folders, binders, etc. (Yes, I'm dorkishly organized and enjoy shopping for supplies that enable this freakish side of me.) We are almost finished with the purging part. Now it's time to start filing all of the keepers. I just love this picture I found from apartment therapy...

Great inspiration. Now, we need to find a filing cabinet with a lock to keep important docs safe (from little hands, and from nosey hired help, which is a whole other post). ;)

images found via yahoo image search