Many of us have some kind of filing system at home and/or at the office. There are many good reasons to keep certain documents and items, and having a central organizer such as a filing cabinet can prove useful. It certainly doesn’t have to be as big as the one pictured, or alternatively, it may be even bigger! Whatever the case, these units need to be decluttered from time to time. Many things we slot into filing cabinets no longer need to be kept, and going through and getting rid of no ‘longer needed items’ is a must, otherwise they will become overstuffed and hard to manage.

The best suggestion I can give you for how to declutter and organize your filing cabinet may not appeal to you, but it may be the most effective way to really get a good look at all of the items in it. You guessed it: you are going to need to empty the cabinet out one section at a time.

If the files aren’t already labelled, you will have your work cut out for you. Labelling your files and placing them in alphabetical order is a must, so that items, when needed, can be easily retrieved. The labels can be stickers or you can simply write directly onto the file folders. Go through each file assessing what needs to stay and what needs to go. Only keep the items that truly need keeping - if you have a receipt for a toaster oven that you no longer even have, you probably don’t need to keep that receipt anymore. Its a good way to stay up to date to what is actually in the files, and you may even find some long lost receipts or invoices that you have been looking for and needing.

If your file cabinet(s) is at the office or even in a home office, the same decluttering rules apply. You may have more cabinets if its for work, so take your time there is no rush and you can work at your own pace.

Last but not least, here’s hoping you find some long lost treasures along the way - you never know what may unfold out of our files!