I have to say, I am a little embarrassed for myself.

About six or eight months ago, I approached a fellow organizer about the Freedom Filer system. Anne, the organizer, is a certified consultant for Freedom Filer system, and I wanted to know if she liked it. She shared with me her thoughts, and I told her I wanted to by a system and give it a try....

Now, being December (my absolute favorite month of the year... time to clean out the file cabinet), I decided to implement the system.

A few things I need to tell you first... I created my own personal system (12 main monthly folders and 8 other various folders) and have used it for the last ten years. My husband and I both share the responsibilities of filing paperwork and retrieving paperwork, so we both need to be able to use the said system.

So, here is our current system. Not very sexy, but it works. Both my husband and I use the system, and we found the best way for record retention was to base the system on WHEN things happen, not on who is the vendor.



Once I cleaned out all the files, I set up our file folders with Freedom Filer and here is what we ended up with. A very clean and effective file drawer. As you can see, we have all our monthly folders (same system as we used before, just better labeled), along with the other various files we need. The nice thing is that the files are coded by CYCLE. Grey is ACTIVE, Orange is REMOVE/REPLACE, Red is PERMANENT and blue is YEARLY.



Freedom Filer is really flexible and allows you to customize the system how you work. For example, we use monthly files for the year, clean them out at the end, and only save a handful of documents for tax purposes once the year is closed. There is also a multi-year labels that are pre-printed, in addition to blank labels, so again FLEXIBILITY.



As you can see, the REMOVE/REPLACE are set differently on the file, so that when we have to clean and purge, it's easier to identify from the standard monthly files.



All in all, I am happy with the system. My husband commented to me how nice it looked and he felt that it seemed a little easier to find things... standard labels, color coding, things that normally, I don't think he would have noticed but apparently he does.

I would highly recommend looking into the system if you are looking for one. It's affordable and I find easy to implement. If you are looking... make sure to hook up with my good friend Anne, she can help you out! Happy filing!