It’s official … I just sold my first company. I have transitioned my residential organizing company, Living Peace, into the capable leadership of my dear friend and colleague, Wendy Buglio, who I know will take excellent care of the team and our clients.
What, you may be asking, does this have to do with color-coding files however? Well, let me tell you, when you sell a company there’s an awful lot of file clean out and transitioning to do!
I spent the better part of a full day going through my entire filing system weeding things out:
• Files for Wendy – Anything that MIGHT be relevant or useful in running Living Peace in the future.
• Files for Me – Anything that might be needed for tax or legal reasons or to keep for Chosen Course.
• Stuff to Recycle – What made me think I would want this handout from a workshop I attended 8 years ago and barely remember…
• Stuff to Shred – old lists of client names from a 2004 mailing; registration applications from a workshop I hosted in 2008, etc.
Which means that I boxed up 5 boxes of files for Wendy from Living Peace, sent 4 bags of recycling and shredded paper out the door, and downsized my files into about 3 drawers once again. In the process, here’s what I learned about my decade-old, color-coded filing system…
It Still Works!!!
What I love about Color-coded files
With a color assigned to each “Major Category” of files, at a glance I know what certain files are. All my client files were green, so those were quickly and easily packed up for Wendy’s future reference. The blue files of Business Development needed to be weeded through more carefully since not all of that stuff was even relevant anymore. Did Wendy really need hand-written notes on a press release draft from 2010… particularly when there was a digital copy of the final I would give her? Nah. Then, all the files from my professional associations such as NAPO (The National Association of Professional Organizers – yep, there’s a national association for organizing geeks, did you know?)… all of that went straight into the recycling bag. The colors allowed me to make decisions faster and know what I was dealing with even before reading the file name.
Colors make it easier to assign homes to major categories. Obviously with weeding out so many files I also moved a bunch of things around… In fact, I have a whole empty bin that I’ll need to decide what to do with (probably encourage my husband to actually SETUP a filing system for himself so he can find his bank statements.) With this re-organization of file locations however, it was easier to just take an entire category and move it from one drawer to another “en masse.” I knew exactly what belongs and what doesn’t in each place based on the color of the file.
Finding files is SO MUCH easier. The biggest reasons I love color-coded files are because they make day-to-day interacting with my files easier. If I’m looking for a financial file, then it’s red. There’s only a handful of red files in the drawer, so the file for my checking account can only be one of these 8-10 folders. There’s no rifling through the entire drawer to find what I need. Usually it takes less than 10 seconds to put my hand on the appropriate file.
Doing filing is SO MUCH easier. You’ve got new stuff to put away? Just like above, if you know it goes in a red file for your checking account, then finding the right file to drop that new statement into take seconds. (Note: this is provided you haven’t overstuffed your drawer. If you have to wrestle or man-handle your files to shove something new in, then it’s time to either weed out your files or upgrade your storage area to create more space. Oh, and USE hanging files AND interior files… they just glide open to drop your new item in, and if you need to take out a whole file you can just remove the inner file and the hanging file will reserve its home to return to easily.)
They look so much nicer in the drawer! I know this little aesthetic grace note may be silly to some, but there’s actually research that says those drab manilla file folders and their army green hanging file friends reduce productivity because they’re so blah.
The Downsides of Color Coded Files
Ok… yes, there are some drawbacks too.
Your filing supplies take up a lot of extra space. I have an entire shelf in my upper closet just for the boxes of colored file folders. Because in order to have a 5-color system you need to buy five colors of interior and hanging files, so that’s 10 boxes. However, I generally keep these boxes in my overstock storage area, so they aren’t in my way, and keep a handful of each color (preloaded with interior and hanging file together) in one of the more convenient office drawers.
Buying 10+ boxes of colored files gets expensive. The corollary to the item above is that buying 10 boxes of files is more expensive. You might be dropping $100+ bucks on setting up your system in the first place, but personally the ease of use and peace of mind is worth that investment.
What happens when you need a red folder and you’re out of red folders? This is why I always keep my overstock full, but I’ve seen it with clients where they get entirely hung up in doing their filing because they’ve run out of some essential supply. *sigh*… yep, it’s time to hop on the office supplies website and order those in ASAP. So, maintaining a color-coded system requires a bit of attention to detail and keeping your supplies stocked.
However, all told, I still would vote for a color-coded filing system every day. Now, if I could just get Evernote to give me a way to color-code my digital notebooks as nicely? *sigh*… maybe someday.
Next Actions
When was the last time you took a good look at your filing system? Is it time for a review, weed out, and reset? If you’re in a transition moment, like I am, then now is a GREAT time to start fresh. Or if you are just tired of fighting your filing system, then no time like now to stop tolerating a system that doesn’t work and instead setup something beautiful and functional.
