Stop Wasting Time Filing and Start Using the One Box Method

Filing paperwork is one of the most boring domestic tasks this side of the Sisyphean job of perpetually doing laundry. But you don’t have to do it. Break free with the tried and true one box method.

Far too many people spend far too much time filing stuff that isn’t important, won’t be ever referenced again, or both. Yet millions of us dutifully put all of our bills in labeled folders, file every single one of the 28 trillion pieces of paper our health insurance providers send us every year, and otherwise waste untold hours on filing busywork.

I’m going to let you in a little secret. Outside of particular circumstances—like you have a severe medical condition and must stay on top of your medical paperwork or you run a home business where immaculate documentation is the name of the game—all that filing doesn’t matter. At all. Yes, you should keep a copy of your mortgage, important personal documents like your social security card, the title of your car, and so on. But beyond putting those things in a safe spot like a fire safe, there’s no reason to waste time meticulously filing things.

Here’s what you should do instead.

1. Buy a bundle of banker’s boxes.
2. Unfold the first banker’s box from the bundle and write the year on the side with a bold black marker.
3. Place two manila folders in the banker’s box labeled “Taxes” and “Important.”
4. Every time a new piece of paper comes into your life that you can’t immediately deal with and discard put it in the box. Tax documents go in the “Taxes” folder. If you anticipate you might need it handy (such as this year’s auto registration or proof of insurance) put it in the “Important” folder so it’s readily accessible. Otherwise, just throw it in the box. That’s right, just toss it in there.
5. At the end of the year, take out the taxes folder to do your taxes and look at the important folder to see if the material inside is critical. If not, toss it back in with the rest of the stuff for that year.
6. At the end of the year and when tax season is over, put it on a shelf in your attic, basement, or a closet out of the way.
7. Make a new box for the new year.
8. Once you have seven boxes, shred or burn the contents of the oldest box. (You can shred or burn even earlier, but we’re recommending seven years as a conservative window based on IRS policies.)

That’s it. That’s the entire system. Throw it all in a box, separate anything related to your taxes, and everything can just sit in a big who-the-hell-cares messy heap in the box.

Now, you might be bristling at the very idea of such chaos, but hear us out. How many minutes per week do you think it takes to maintain an immaculate file system with dozens (if not hundreds) of folders in a file cabinet? Let’s conservatively say, even for a total filing wizard, it takes 10 minutes a week. That’s 8.6 hours per year even with our very conservative estimate. Realistically it’s probably double that for someone with a lot of paperwork coming in, so more like 16 hours. And these estimates aren’t even factoring in purging old paperwork regularly.

Now contemplate how often you’ve had to go digging through your file cabinet to procure anything that wasn’t tax-related or a one-off need here or there. Probably not very often and if you did need to go digging for your January 2017 cable bill for some odd reason, do you really think it would take you 8-16 hours worth of rifling through a single cardboard box to find it? Of course not. The beauty of the one box method is that you’re gambling on the very probable scenario that you will never look at any of these innumerable pieces of paper again. In the odd case that you do, it’s just sitting in a box you can quickly sift through.

So why not make the whole process simple? If you’re not in a situation where perfect filing and organization is a must (such as navigating a messy legal battle or caring for a child with a severe illness who needs all their paperwork in order), then let go of the illusion that filing anything really matters. Label a box with the year, throw it all in and spend your life doing far more rewarding things than filing.