Yep, for paper documents I have a 4-drawer filing cabinet, which I got cheap second hand years ago. It takes up some space, but the benefits over the years have

Yep, for paper documents I have a 4-drawer filing cabinet, which I got cheap second hand years ago. It takes up some space, but the benefits over the years have been huge: - I always know where to look for a document (even in the worst case of not remembering which folder it's quick to scan through the folders and to look through the 'misc' folder). - I never have to think about whether to keep or throw out some letter or item -- I just file it, there's plenty of room. Every few years I have a shredding session to get rid of some of the ancient stuff and free up more space. The important rule for me is that I never put anything in it unless it is really just reference material -- if I need to do something first I do that thing pretty quickly, or at least get an item in my todo list for it. And I set up automatic bill payment by direct debit so that I don't need to take manual action for arriving bills. So the filing cabinet works partly because 95% of incoming paperwork is "read in 30 seconds, file and forget" and I don't procrastinate the other 5% long enough for it to pile up. My electronic document handling, on the other hand, is shocking: - documents scattered between multiple machines - no coherent folder structure - online statements usually stuck behind the web UI of each individual bank or utility, with no trustable archive so I much prefer paper bills and statements to electronic...