How to Organize House Records

Ready to tackle another organization project? Let’s create a binder for all of your house records. I just transferred my house records over from a file box to a binder, so I have lots of tips and goodies to share with you. First up? A pretty printable cover to slip into your binder. And now that we have your binder looking sharp, let’s tackle the stuff that goes inside. After going through all of my files, here’s what I decided to include: Business cards for all of our go-to contractors and service providers. These fit nicely in a couple baseball card sleeves that I swiped from my husband. Our paint colors. There’s a page for the interior colors (shown here) and another for the exterior colors. These are on file at Sherwin Williams, but I like to have my own copy. Users’ manuals and installation guides. I keep most of my manuals in that fancy schmancy users’ manual binder that I shared with you earlier in the week, but I decided to keep the ones that pertain to the house here. To make a clear distinction between the two, I included anything that would convey with the house, if we were to sell it (we won’t). So, manuals to our light fixtures, HVAC systems, stove, sink and all of those other house bits are stored here. House repair and renovation receipts. We’ve restored our house from top to bottom, so we have a lot of receipts. To keep them all straight, I tucked them inside a pocket folder. A Project Ideas Folder. When I come across good ideas in magazines, I like to tear them out and save them for inspiration (very Pre-Pinterest of me, I know). This nifty three-pocket folder does a good job of corralling all of my tear sheets. Also Included in My Binder (but not pictured):

• A copy of our engineer’s report (an accessory you gain when a tree falls on your house)
• A copy of our homeowner’s association guidelines
• A copy of our most recent appraisal
• The certificate and recommendations from our home energy audit
• Photos from our renovation projects and those tackled by past owners (for now these are just tucked in the back pocket)

Other Things You May Want to Include:

• A home maintenance schedule
• A home maintenance log

A Few More Tips to Help You with Your Project

• Only keep labor receipts in your house records. Material receipts need to go in your fire safe (which is something I’ll be talking about soon)
• If you put everything in plastic sleeves like I did, regular dividers won’t work. I used Avery NoteTabs in this project. When I run out, I’ll probably switch to Semikolon Sticky Tab Markers, simply because they’re cheaper
• Be sure to choose a binder with enough room to grow. The picture below shows what my binder looked like after I tried to cram everything into a three-inch binder. Needless to say, I’ll be upgrading as soon as I come across a good deal

Follow me on my organization adventure, and you’ll have complete binder system when we’re done. Here’s the first binder, in case you missed it:

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