My Home Office
In June I wrote a post about organizing paper financial records, and a couple days later wrote a post on household paper management, but didn’t talk about pros and cons of specific filing systems.
My home office, pictured above, has two different filing systems with different requirements and features. First, I needed a filing system for client paper records that would meet the terms of my privacy policy and legal record keeping requirements, yet also fit in my tiny office walk-in closet pictured below. I wanted to use the closet for these records instead of the office area because I have more ongoing business filing than client filing, and it’s kind of awkward maneuvering in and out of the tiny closet to store and retrieve files. The office area is dedicated to business records.
Office Walk-In Closet
These two handsome Bisley® 2-Drawer file cabinets from The Container Store met both requirements well.
Bisley® 2-Drawer Filing Cabinets
The two cabinets fit perfectly on the shelf at the back of the closet and each cabinet has its own lock and key. The cabinets are well-constructed. I particularly like the anti-tilt feature. There really are no drawbacks to this solution except for the closet maneuvering.
In the office area, I chose a complete organizing solution from a Hold Everything retail store. I don’t believe any of these stores are open any longer as according to the Williams-Sonoma, Inc. corporate timeline, the related e-commerce site holdeverything.com was closed when the Hold Everthing brand got absorbed by other Williams-Sonoma brands in July 2006.
Hold Everything Organizing Solution
I love having all of the business paper flows and filing handled by one attractive system. The wicker filing boxes are easy to work with–I just open the lid and file away.
There are a couple drawbacks of this system:
- the wicker gets dusty
- the records in the box at the bottom of each two-box stack are more difficult to access
Vaccuming works pretty well to keep down the dust, and the lower boxes have older records, so I don’t often need to lift the top boxes to get access.
My favorite filing cabinet for household records is this 3-drawer lateral filing cabinet from IKEA (ignore the bread machine on the floor–that’s waiting to be dropped off at the church thrift store).
It seems IKEA has discontinued this particular cabinet, but if you search for EFFEKTIV cabinet at http://www.ikea.com/us/ you’ll see that it looks similar in design.
I like the lateral cabinet best because it’s easy to retreive and store files from the top drawers from standing height without bending, which is easier on the back.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow, you are very organized. My extent of filing is a bunch of file folders hanging in a portable filing cabinet in a dusty room we don’t use. I really need to get more organized!
Hi Little House. A portable filing cabinet works fine if it is easy to access and holds everything you need to file.