By this time, like many of us, the novelty of “stay at home” has worn off.  You now abhor Netflix, and can’t possibly binge watch one more show, or make one more attempt at delicious homemade bread…

So, what now?

If you are in the “let’s get this place organized” mode there is one important task you can do that will have a long term payoff.

Organize your personal documents. 

While this may not be as much fun as learning French or finishing that knitting project, you will be glad you did it for years to come.  Not all documents are equal and need to be saved the same amount of time.  There are some documents you need to keep, basically forever, but many you can purge.

Keep forever – Tax filings, birth certificates, adoption records, death certificates, social security cards, passports, divorce or separation papers, business organization documents, property deeds, auto title documents, wills and trust documents.

Keep for seven years – Documents of loans that have been paid off.

Keep for three years – Bank statements, receipts for items you wrote off on your taxes kept with tax documents, home improvement records to be kept three years after property is sold or transferred (keep all home improvement records the entire time you own the property), mortgage annual statements as long as you own the property.

Keep one year – medical bills, paycheck stubs, utility bills, mortgage statements (or until you receive the annual statement), receipts, ATM statements (some experts say for receipts and ATM statements one month – so long as you don’t need them for tax purposes, in which case you would keep them with your tax documents three years)

Keep while active – contracts, insurance documents, stock certificates, pension and retirement plan records, warranty documents.

It can be a dusty and long job but you will feel so much better when you have gotten all your documents in order.  Then you can break out that paint by numbers project!