April 15^th – tax day — is only a few days away. Have you filed your taxes yet? If not, is it because you’re having trouble finding the necessary documents?

Unclutterer.com recently ran a paper clutter-organization series that we thought might be helpful for those of your trying to come up with document organization strategies. In the most recent post, Unclutterer.com suggests scanning all of your important documents into your computer. What a great idea! Having these documents in electronic form will reduce the amount of paper clutter in your spaces, and help you easily access them. (Just remember to back up your computer!)

Our filing cabinet was the worst of our paper monstrosity. Crammed into folders were papers that we wanted but didn’t necessarily need in tangible form. We knew that there were some papers that we had to keep in paper form — like mortgage documents, tax returns, and insurance policies — but finding them was next to impossible because of all of the other clutter. Ultimately, we decided that we wanted our filing cabinet to only include those documents that were at must-keep status.

The blogger found this technique so helpful that she decided to use it to organize other documents like magazine articles. It’s even great to archive photos.

After having so much success with reducing the paper clutter in our filing cabinet, we went next to our magazines. We pulled out each article or image that we wanted to keep and scanned it. Now, I have files on my computer such as “sewing inspiration,” which are right at my fingertips.

If you don’t already have a document scanner, you should seriously consider investing in one. We found this great help document on Microsoft.com that instructs you on how to use and troubleshoot a standard scanner.

If you don’t use this method — what do you do to keep your documents organized? Do you have a special place to keep certain documents or forms? How do you keep it organized?