Over time, all kinds of documents, contracts, invoices and other papers that you need or want to keep accumulate at home. A spring clean will help to prevent all that messy paperwork descending into chaos.
"Sometimes you don't even know what you have anymore," says Petra Hermann, an organizational consultant based in Germany who specializes in business and private offices.
Her advice is to generally scan documents and store them digitally on a laptop, an external storage disc or in the cloud. Only keep what you really still need as an analogue document in paper form, such as your rental agreement or documents relating to current insurance policies. Depending on the type of document, the rest should be shredded and thrown away.
A classic case for the bin is operating instructions. "They're often written in umpteen languages and I usually only need the two pages in my language," says Hermann. These can be scanned or photographed and saved somewhere.
Once a year, or whenever required, you can also go through your document binders and sort out outdated papers, analogue invoices or expired warranty certificates. Spring cleaning your documents can also be a good opportunity to check whether your important current contracts are where they should be.
She warns that a typical mistake is to file all your documents chronologically in folders. "That doesn't help me because I then have to search for ages within the folder to find something." Things get even more complicated if someone else has to look for a particular paper, for example relatives, because you are ill or travelling.
Hermann recommends proceeding thematically rather than chronologically by creating a folder just for matters relating to the house, for example.
Or you could organize the document folder thematically, or use an alphabetical index containing the most important information (such as account numbers and customer references). If it's a rental agreement, it makes sense to include the landlord's contact details.
If you regularly sort out your analogue papers, then a single folder - sorted by topic - will usually be sufficient for all documents relating to your home, insurance policies and the like, says Hermann.