Storing documents at home: ideas that will be useful to everyone


Organizing the storage of documents at home is sooner or later required by any housewife. Over several decades of life, each person accumulates a large number of personal and household documents. When receipts, contracts, and birth certificates of children are dumped into one storage box, it is difficult to quickly find a small-sized ID card or SNILS. From time to time, everyone thinks about how to organize archive storage.

How to organize document storage at home

To store documents at home, you can use special shelves, drawers, and boxes. The capacity and appearance of the devices depend on the type and number of storage media. To organize the storage of documents, you need an accumulated archive:

  1. sort through;
  2. throw out what is irrelevant;
  3. sort the leftovers.

Folders for storing documents are purchased in advance. You will need several pieces for receipts, certificates, contracts.

To restore order, the contents of the storage facilities are placed in one pile and then carefully examined one paper at a time. Some letters and receipts have legal weight even after several decades. For example, correspondence with bailiffs stating that the ex-husband does not pay child support is saved. Such information can become an evidence base in the future.

You can easily get rid of:

  1. receipts from stores after the return period has expired;
  2. notifications from the tax office about the approaching deadline for submitting reports;
  3. receipts older than 3 years;
  4. outdated warranty cards and instructions.

Issuance of electronic documentation

ED from the archive can only be obtained by copying. The reliability of such a file is determined by special software. When issuing, the action of the archivist must be reflected on paper in the designated journal. The ability to transmit ED over a local network is available. In this case, the archivist makes a corresponding entry in the electronic journal. In both cases, the log displays the following information:

  • Account number of the issued electronic document;
  • Date of issue of the document;
  • Full name of the employee who requested the papers from the archive;
  • The structural unit of the employee who requested the document.

All submissions of documents must be recorded so that the organization keeps records of the movement of documentation.

Storage systems: drawer, folder, box or organizer

Organizing the storage of documents at home begins with determining the number of papers remaining after the inspection and their purpose. An entrepreneur who has registered an individual entrepreneur at his address, in addition to his personal archive, will have accumulated a lot of accounting reports and other specific information.

Work documents should be kept separate from personal ones. It is advisable to organize storage not only in different folders, but also in different drawers and cabinets.

Folders for storing documents at home must be signed and placed in a box for business papers. Markings are made on the spines.

The system for storing documents at home begins with classifying storage media by their type. You will have to buy storage folders for the following types of documents at home:

  1. studies (diplomas, certificates of completion of courses);
  2. work (work book, employment contract with the employer, certificates from the employment center, letters of gratitude);
  3. any documents of title to real estate, bank accounts (rent agreements, donations, purchase and sale agreements, certificate of inheritance);
  4. family (identity cards, national and foreign passports, SNILS, birth, marriage, divorce certificates).
  5. loans (agreements with credit institutions, debt repayment receipts, statements);
  6. purchases (receipts, warranty cards, instructions);
  7. utility bills (paid bills).

All that remains is to arrange the folders in boxes and drawers intended for storing documents at home. The choice of device depends on the financial capabilities and imagination of the archive owner. It could be:

  1. Large box for storing documents. Separators are installed between files installed in it.
  2. File folder. A large folder with already installed files can replace the box.
  3. An iron safe or box for storing documents will be useful for an entrepreneur who keeps financial reports and other important papers in his apartment.
  4. Case. A small suitcase with a key lock is suitable for transporting valuable documents.

In one of the rooms you can select a closet or chest of drawers, in which one or more shelves can be allocated for storing documents at home.

There are many options; you can watch the video for good ideas on how to organize document storage.

A fireproof iron box for storing documents and valuables at home, is relevant if it contains:

  1. papers confirming ownership;
  2. personal seals;
  3. large amounts of cash.

A folder for medical tests, books, and prescriptions should be allocated separately for each family member. This will speed up the search for the necessary documents and structure their storage.

Systematization

Finally, you got rid of useless, expired receipts and certificates. It's time to decide how to keep your documents in order at home; The organizing ideas are simple and offer three approaches to organizing.


Folder for basic documents Source comfylife.ru

Most often, papers are sorted into categories that logically follow from the scope of application of the documentation. In this case, the following groups appear: documents for housing, tax, medical, and further as necessary. Separate categories are allocated for receipts for payment of utility services, as well as for checks with a guarantee.

Sometimes it is convenient to store personal documents of each family member; The papers of parents and children are kept separately. If there are animals in the house, sorting also applies to them.


On open shelves Source media.placester.com

In some cases, it is more convenient for owners to organize papers by frequency of use:

  • Archival (perpetual storage). Both housing documents and memorabilia, such as photographs, are placed here.
  • Basic documentation. These papers are needed from time to time, so they are kept separately. These are passports, diplomas, certificates, medical cards.
  • Active (current). Receipts for payment of services, as well as important notes, which are made hastily and tend to get lost if they are not immediately placed in a certain place.


Desk organizer Source avatars.mds.yandex.net

Convenient storage of documents in electronic form

Passports, marriage, divorce, and birth certificates must be scanned. If lost, it will be easier to restore them using printed copies. You can upload the information to a flash drive and duplicate it in a cloud storage, such as Yandex Disk, Google Drive or Dropbox. If the information storage device fails, the information will remain intact on the server.

The necessary instructions and warranty cards can be folded into one separate organizer for storing documents at home. Manuals that are rarely needed are converted into electronic form. To do this, you can create a text file in your laptop, and enter the full names and markings of all available household appliances there. You can scan or photograph some of the instructions.

Electronic storage of instructions is a convenient placement that saves space in your home.

Electronic storage methods allow you to save information on building materials and decorative finishes. At any time you can open the file and view information about the manufacturer, color name, collection:

  1. tiles;
  2. linoleum;
  3. upholstery fabric.

Scanned brochures and instructions are easy to read on the monitor. Manuals are usually printed in very small font. Photos can be enlarged to an easy-to-read size.

Most likely, there are already instructions on the Internet for your household appliances. Find it by model name. You don't have to take pictures and scan the instructions yourself.

How to store receipts, papers and documents: 3 steps to order

Do you keep losing birth certificates or warranty cards at the most inopportune moments? Are papers taking up too much space? Husband and children can never find their documents? Or maybe everything seems to be in order, but for some reason it’s inconvenient? Well, this is not surprising - many people tend to maintain order everywhere, but not in documents. It's so boring and dull!

However, if you know a few principles and tricks, organizing your papers won't be difficult. Moreover, order here can be restored once and almost forever. But what relief will the mere sight of neat folders with all these receipts, invoices, warranty cards and so on bring you?

So, let's begin.

Step 1. Collect ALL papers and documents in one place

Place all the papers and documents you have in the house in one place. Don’t forget about those papers that hang on the refrigerator and even about the instructions and warranties that are in the boxes of equipment. Everything collected must be laid out on the table or floor.

Attention! Let’s immediately make a reservation that our audit should not include postcards, children’s drawings, letters and other sentimental and semi-sentimental papers

Why is it so important to collect all the papers in one place? The fact is that this whole pile will shock you, you will see with your own eyes how much space all these pieces of paper take up, you will feel how much time you spent moving them back and forth, searching for what you need.

Why is it so important to collect all the papers in one place? The fact is that this whole pile will shock you, you will see with your own eyes how much space all these pieces of paper take up, you will feel how much time you spent moving them back and forth, searching for what you need. And now a spoiler: in the near future, only 3 beautiful daddies (or trays) will remain from this mountain, approximately as in the photo

And now a spoiler: in the near future, only 3 beautiful daddies (or trays) will remain from this mountain, approximately as in the photo.

Now that the whole bunch has been collected, there is nowhere to retreat. Let's take it one step further and get rid of everything unnecessary. From everything in the literal sense of the word. You only need to leave those papers and documents that fall into one of these categories:

  • Currently relevant and requiring attention (invoices to be paid, forms to fill out, etc.);
  • Necessary for a limited period of time (current year tax documents, warranties, utility bills, etc.);
  • Things you need to keep forever (passports, contracts, mortgage documents, birth certificates, etc.).

Attention! At this stage, there is NO need to sort papers into topics like “household documentation”, “car documentation”, etc. This organizing principle will only increase the number of folders and make the system inconvenient

Obviously, you should say goodbye to advertising brochures, expired warranty cards, instructions from equipment that you no longer have, and other rubbish without hesitation. Please also dispose of the following papers:

  • Utility bills – they must be kept for 3 years. Anything that lasts longer can be safely thrown away;
  • Operating instructions for all available equipment (if necessary, they can be easily found on the Internet);
  • Notes and study materials (strictly speaking, if you have not learned the knowledge gained and have not applied it in practice so far, then most likely you do not need them. By the way, if you give yourself the instruction to throw away notebooks immediately after the courses, then the knowledge will be absorbed much better. However, records that really need to be preserved can be photographed or digitized and then stored in a virtual storage. But still try to be as critical as possible when revising this category of papers);
  • Business cards;
  • Magazine clippings.

Step 3. Organize storage

Place all 3 groups of documents and papers remaining after the audit into three folders

Important: Make sure that the “Documents Requiring Attention” folder is always as empty as possible. If it is full, it means that your business is not very productive.

  • It is best to use plastic file folders or regular folders;
  • The worst idea for storing papers is accordion folders;

  • Folders should be signed so that your household always understands where everything is;
  • There is no need to bother with maintaining warranties for electrical appliances. Just stack them and put them in a folder. They are used so rarely that, if necessary, you can spend 1-2 minutes searching for the required coupon.

Place all three folders in one place vertically. For example, you can put them in a magazine rack like in the photo below.


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Methods of organization

To quickly find the document you need, you need to divide them into categories. Be sure to attach labels to each category, or use color coding. Paper information can be classified according to its purpose:

  1. medicine;
  2. Appliances;
  3. repair.

Fragmentation that is too fine will result in a clutter of folders that will make it difficult to find the help you need.

Get a safe

Storing “eternal” documents requires compliance with certain security rules. Specialized cabinets at home take up a lot of space. Consider purchasing a fireproof safe or renting a safe deposit box.

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Scan them and save backup copies to cloud storage. This way you can gain access remotely and in any emergency situation. Don't forget about security measures: use strong passwords that other people can't guess.

Storing documents in the office

If you have a work office, then it is more convenient to organize the storage of documents in it. Desk drawers and shelving are a convenient way to store documents at home. Place only important papers in them or those that need quick access.

It is better to store key and significant work documents in a safe. Place it in your desk drawers or closet. Furniture panels must be opaque.

A box is suitable for storing non-essential documents. If the apartment has a separate office, you can buy special office furniture. On the shelves of the cabinets, labeled folders are arranged vertically in alphabetical order.

A box for storing a large number of documents at home is not the best option. Papers are placed in a stack. When you need to find something, you have to take out the entire contents and sort through them one by one. Such manipulations take a lot of time. Therefore, for medical brochures, prescriptions, certificates, you need to use a document organizer.

DVD and Blu-ray discs

One of the most affordable ways to store home archives is also the most unreliable. Yes, you can easily buy several disks and organize your collection, but you won't do anything with the data if the media becomes unreadable. Manufacturers promise us up to 100 years of service life for DVD and Blu-ray discs, but in reality this figure does not exceed 4-5 years. Problems with reading arise due to natural wear and tear, after scratches and abrasions appear on the working surface, and due to non-compliance with the storage temperature conditions.

The main thing that captivates users in this storage method is the volume. For a regular DVD it is 4.7 GB, for a double-sided disc it is 8.5 GB. Blu-ray has the most “pleasant” parameters - you can record photos and videos on them with a total capacity of 25 or 50 GB, depending on the number of working sides (one and two, respectively). True, to record Blu-ray discs you will need not ordinary drives, which are installed in every second laptop and PC, but special ones - expensive and not so popular.

Is it worth using such discs for home archives? Yes, but with several conditions: you will treat them with care, do not leave them in the cold or in direct sunlight, and also make it a rule to copy the data onto new media every 2-3. The old ones can be used as backup for some time.

Other Document Organization Ways and Ideas

People who store a large number of different important documents can purchase:

  1. wooden or plastic box;
  2. paper racks;
  3. sorter;
  4. vertical trays;
  5. briefcase folder;
  6. case with a lock;
  7. stationery envelopes;
  8. folders with a zipper or a button.

There are several rules for conveniently organizing document storage at home:

  1. Place papers that you rarely use further;
  2. Create several large folders in which you group papers in one direction;
  3. Choose the right size storage tools. Small documents can be stored several times in one file;
  4. Try to transfer the document into electronic form as much as possible to free up space;
  5. Audit your document archive once or twice a year.

You can buy vertical racks and boxes for storing documents at home, or make them yourself from fiberboard, plywood, or buy them at a furniture store.

Tax returns and papers

In order to easily track the storage periods of certain documents, including declarations, you can find a table with the necessary data on the Internet. It will help every accountant not to get confused and miss deadlines. Otherwise, tax liability may arise with the imposition of large fines. In addition, the Tax Code of the Russian Federation regulates that tax returns can be submitted in electronic format.

How to file documents, watch the video:

The procedure for storing documents in an organization has its own characteristics and deadlines, so every authorized employee or founder of an enterprise should know all the nuances and principles of constructing work. In the article, everyone was able to see not only the regulatory regulation of the issue, but also the features of storage, deadlines in individual cases, the procedure for liquidating an organization and much more. We should not forget that the legislator has formed general principles, but the organizations themselves set their own requirements at the local level.

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Rules for storing documents at home

To ensure that your documents are always in order, review them regularly to ensure they are up to date. Get outdated quickly:

  1. Paid utility bills. This information is valid for three years;
  2. Annually renewable contracts.

It is convenient to make any payments online through your Sberbank personal account. If there are any misunderstandings with the rent, you can always find the required receipt in the history and print it out on paper. Money is also transferred for children’s meals at school, and monthly parental fees for preschool institutions are paid. The convenience is that the electronic form is stored for a long time on the bank’s official website, and does not gather dust in piles at home.

Accounting documents

Primary accounting documents, accounting registers, accounting (financial) statements, audit reports on them are subject to storage by an economic entity for periods established in accordance with the rules for organizing state archival affairs, but not less than five years after the reporting year (Part 1 of Art. 29 of the Federal Law of December 6, 2011 No. 402-FZ “”, hereinafter referred to as Law No. 402-FZ). The storage periods for electronic documents (registers) are established in the same manner as for documentation generated on paper. At the same time, economic entities must store accounting policy documents, standards of an economic entity, other documents related to the organization and maintenance of accounting, including tools that ensure the reproduction of electronic documents, as well as verification of the authenticity of an electronic signature for at least five years after the year in which they were used to prepare accounting (financial) statements last time ().

When determining specific storage periods for individual accounting documents, one should be guided by the List of standard management archival documents generated in the course of the activities of state bodies, local governments and organizations, indicating storage periods, approved by Order of the Ministry of Culture of Russia dated August 25, 2010 No. 558 (hereinafter referred to as the List). This List was developed and approved in pursuance of the provisions of Federal Law No. 125-FZ of October 22, 2004 “On Archival Affairs in the Russian Federation” (hereinafter referred to as Law No. 125-FZ).

In accordance with clause 1.4 of the List, the storage periods for documents are calculated from January 1 of the year following the year of completion of their paperwork.

Please note that most accounting documents and financial statements have a retention period of 5 years. However, some documents have shorter storage periods, while others have longer storage periods. In addition, there are documents that must be permanently stored.

For example:

  • accounting (financial) statements (balance sheets, profit and loss statements, reports on the intended use of funds, appendices to them, etc.) are stored (item 351 of the List): a) consolidated annual (consolidated) - permanently; b) annual – constantly; c) quarterly – 5 years (in the absence of annual – permanent); d) monthly – 1 year (in the absence of quarterly – permanently);
  • tax returns (calculations) of legal entities for all types of taxes, declarations and calculations of advance payments for insurance contributions for compulsory pension insurance are stored for 5 years (clause 392 of the List);
  • declarations and calculations of advance payments for insurance contributions for compulsory pension insurance are stored for 5 years, and in the absence of personal accounts or payroll records - 75 years (clause 395 of the List);
  • tax cards for recording income and personal income tax (form No. 1-NDFL), information on the income of individuals is stored for 5 years, and in the absence of personal accounts or payroll records - 75 years (clause 394, clause 396 of the List );
  • primary accounting documents and appendices to them, which recorded the fact of a business transaction and were the basis for accounting records (cash documents and books, bank documents, counterfoils of bank check books, orders, time sheets, bank notices and transfer requests, acts of acceptance, delivery, write-off property and materials, receipts, invoices and advance reports, correspondence, etc.), are stored for 5 years, subject to an inspection (audit) (Article 362 of the List);
  • correspondence about the purchase of household property, office supplies, railway and air tickets, payment for communication services and other administrative expenses, and the provision of hotel accommodations is stored for 1 year (clause 367 of the List);
  • registers of information on the income of individuals are stored for 75 years, as are personal cards and employee accounts (clause 397, clause 413 of the List);
  • documents (protocols, acts, calculations, statements, conclusions) on the revaluation of fixed assets, determination of depreciation of fixed assets, assessment of the value of the organization’s property are stored permanently (Article 429 of the List);
  • documents (applications, appraisal reports, correspondence, etc.) on the sale of movable property are stored for 10 years (clause 430 of the List);
  • acts on the transfer of rights to real estate and transactions with it from the previous to the new copyright holder (from balance sheet to balance sheet) are stored permanently (Article 432 of the List).

Why order is so important

Even today, in the age of universal computerization, not all data is contained in electronic form. A passport is the most striking example of a physical medium of information, but there are also contracts, deeds of gift, certificates, and wills certified by signatures.

For the above you need to find a place, and the most suitable one. For what? For several reasons:

  • So that papers do not stick out from every drawer of a long-suffering chest of drawers and, even more so, do not clutter up a room in which there is often not enough free space.
  • To know exactly where everything is, and not waste precious time searching for the file you need.
  • To protect contracts with evidence from damage, since the restoration of such important things either takes a long time or is completely impossible.
  • To protect information from prying eyes (so that an outsider cannot accidentally or intentionally become familiar with the content of a project or personal letter).
  • In order to quickly pick up the papers along with other valuables in case of emergency leaving the home, for example, in the event of a gas leak or fire.

There are plenty of reasons, and they are significant, but order will not arise on its own, only because of the desire to create it, so let’s look at how to achieve it.

How to lead correctly

It will not be possible to create a folder once and forever. It is recommended to update the information promptly. This can only be done upon written request from the employee. The personnel officer has no right to make any adjustments on his own initiative.

The HR department has the right to issue the folder to anyone only on the order of the manager. Moreover, this also applies to the person to whom it is instituted. An employee has the right to familiarize himself with the materials at any time, but he cannot take them outside the office without the appropriate permission from management.

Where should accounting documents be stored?

Accounting documents related to the business activities of the LLC must be stored at the address where the sole executive body is located or in a place that is known and where all members of the company can get (clause 2 of Article 50 of the LLC Law). As for accounting documentation and other documents of joint-stock companies, it must be stored at the location of the executive body (clause 2 of Article 89 of the Law on JSC).

Documentation should be stored in a specially equipped room or closed cabinets (clause 6.2 of the letter of the Ministry of Finance dated July 29, 1983 No. 105). How to arrange such storage facilities is discussed in detail in the rules, which were approved by the decision of the Rosarkhiv board of 02/06/2002.

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