Sometimes you just feel like you are drowning in papers, even in the digital age. From bills to medical records, papers keep piling up and your storage capacity is greatly overextended until you lose complete overview of papers that are actually important and should always be at hand.

These common filing mistakes play a role in organizing your paper chaos and can be easily remedied by yourself or with the help of a professional organizer:

Underestimating necessary amount and filing categories:

Before you stuff all papers in a folder, take the time to sort all papers by category (bills, invoices, taxes). You will organize your filing and gauge how much total filing space you will require; going furniture shopping will make sense with this knowledge.

Creating non-descriptive labels:

Once you established your categories, be sure to label them appropriately; indicate the type of bills (utility versus medical bills) and sort them by date, for instance “Medical bills Jan – July 2010″;

Filing unnecessary papers:

Manuals of your latest gadget, announcement cards for the new restaurant that will open in a month are all papers that can either easily be downloaded from the Internet, are outdated in a short period of time or simply are unnecessary to keep for any reason. Be sure to shred papers that contain personal information.

Delaying filing of papers:

You will save time by filing incoming papers often and keeping that pile manageable. Pick a day of the week when you will put away all papers. This will make filing part of your regular routine and make it more likely for you to actually do it.

Not regularly purging old papers:

Go through your filing cabinet and decide which papers are no longer necessary to keep. Check with your accountant on the time limit of keeping financial statements. Doing this regularly will help you maintain a lean filing cabinet which will always have room for new papers.

Now that you made peace with your paper wars, be sure to get the appropriate filing cabinet solutions. Office supply stores offer a variety of conventional filing cabinets in many different sizes. Specialty stores carry designs of different materials like wood or colored metal that will add to your decor. Measure your space before you go out to buy one. Keep in mind that it needs to fit in whichever dedicated space you have in mind. Measure the dimension from your floor to the underside of your desk if you are planning to slide your cabinet under your desk. Also pay attention to the width, as your chair and legs need to fit beside the cabinet as well.