I have several of these box files in grey and black. But I’ve also thought about having coloured ones. They have nice cerise and aqua coloured ones in Morrisons for £2.93 and I have stood and looked at them for some time. The aqua would look nice in the kitchen.

I think I probably needs to keep some files in the kitchen where I open the post. Although I would have to keep most of them in the study as there is not much space in the kitchen. We do have some papers in a filing cabinet under the desk – but it is difficult to get papers in and out – so I wonder if we should do away with the cabinet.

There is so much to think about before I can do anything with the papers.

If you can afford to get someone in I’d do that – it will be the spur to make you do something in preparation – but they can so all the hard work. (We have cleaners once a week – partly to make us clear up before they come. Once they came and went away again because they said it was too untidy to clean.)

the ladder would require health and safety procedures and as H is fairly near the beginning of the alphabet would be near the top so you would not be able to get it without a ladder ,,technically this is called deadlock or a deadly embrace…keep the documents on the floor Dave

Some of my customers scan everything that comes in and then keep only the electronic copy…sounds good until one asks how you can read the 8″ floppy disks I used in the 1980s!

‘Open cast filing’ I love it – at the moment our back room, which accidentally became my office when I started working from home, has a path between the door and the patio window and the rest is pretty much boxes, piles of paper etc. You can track my various attempts to tame it by the labels on files and boxes saying things like ‘possible sermon resources – 1999 ->’ and ‘memorabilia – unsorted’.

I went to a talk by an experienced vicar about how to deal with admin, he finally got someone in part time and put all the unsorted papers in 20 boxes in his attic – nine years later he’s sorted through all but 2 of them, and of course thrown most of it out.

I don’t think there is an answer – except apparently (from the posts) above have a partner who is good at admin!

I want to know what you do with your cartoons once you have uploaded them. Mine are building up on the piano stool at the moment..

My systems don’t seem to work well. I am ok with digital files but paper just seems to linger and get everywhere.

Today, buoyed by enthusiasm from this thread I am going to tackle the pile of all piles in my office.

My problem is developing systems to make the ongoing things happen in an ongoing manner. These days it should be possible to automate everything using computers and things like that. That is the bit I need help with perhaps.