How to Organize an Office File Cabinet
Developing a good system for staying organized at work is almost as important as your job itself. Organization will help to increase your productivity since being able to find what you need when you need it saves time. That means you are able to spend more of your valuable time on your actual job and less time sifting through piles or drawers looking for what you need to do your job.
Learning how to organize an office file cabinet for maximum efficiency is one way that you can get better organized. Getting rid of paper piles and giving every paper a home will keep your work area clutter-free and drastically reduce wasted time.
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Things You'll Need
- Expandable hanging files
- Hanging file labels
- Expandable file folders
- Index cards (optional)
Instructions
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Sort the documents that will be stored in the file cabinet into general categories based on your specific business field.
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Insert expandable hanging files into each drawer of the file cabinet.
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Create a hanging file label for each category of documents that you have.
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Attach the labels to the hanging files in alphabetical order, placing the first label on the far left of the first hanging file and the next so that it sits to the right of the first label. Continue staggering your labels until you reach the far right of a folder. Start the next label back at the far left.
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Work one category of documents at a time and sort the documents within each category into sub-categories.
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Write the name of each sub-category on the tab of an expandable file folder.
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Insert the documents for each sub-category into the respective file folder and insert the file folders alphabetically into the respective hanging files.
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Create labels for the outside of each file cabinet drawer to identify which categories can be found in each drawer. Use whatever materials are provided with your file cabinet for this. If you do not have materials to create these labels, index cards work well for this purpose. You can either tape them to the front of each drawer or insert them into the slot that can be found on most file cabinet drawers.
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Tips & Warnings
Do not overfill file cabinet drawers. Work with the assumption that you will need to file more documents as time goes on. Allow some growing room in each drawer. This will save you from having to re-shuffle your files later on.
Create a schedule to purge your files. At least once per year files should be reviewed and purged, when appropriate, to prevent overflow.
References
- Photo Credit lean on me image by Pix by Marti from Fotolia.com
