Hi everyone, I'm Alejandra from alejandra.tv.
In this video, we are talking about how to organize your most important documents at
home so if you find yourself in an emergency situation and you have to quickly evacuate
your house, you don't have to run throughout your house looking for your most vital records,
deciding what to grab, what not to grab and probably not thinking straight.
Instead, you can just go to one place in your house, grab your most important documents
and evacuate your house.
Before we get started, if you have stacks of paperwork in your house and you are having
a hard time getting started, getting yourself to show up and begin sorting out your paperwork,
there is a link below to check out my paper clutter kickstart, which is a mini-course
designed to help you get started easily with sorting things out.
Because, sorting is always the very first step when it comes to organizing your paperwork.
Okay, this is the bag right here where I have my most important documents.
It is a fire resistant and water resistant bag, and it lives in a safe place in the house
where both my husband and I know exactly where to find this bag if we're ever in an emergency
situation and need to grab this thing and go.
The biggest thing is to isolate your vital records and safeguard them in a safe place.
A great place to keep your most important documents is in a safe that is bolted to the
ground or bolted to a stud in the wall.
Let me go ahead and show you what is inside, and I will put a link to where you can find
this bag and what I'm going to show you inside.
Right here I have this legal size accordion organizer.
I labeled it vital documents because they're vital documents and I used an orange label
because when I think of important, I think of the color orange.
I found a legal size accordion for some of the legal size paperwork as opposed to letter
size.
And using this organizer with this bag, it's a tight fit but it does work, and I feel like
it just fits nicely.
Inside here, I have 12 different tabs with all of the different categories of most important
documents.
I'm going to go through the categories with you.
The first category is birth certificates or death certificates.
This can also include any adoption paperwork or any adoption paperwork from animals or
birth records from pets or something.
The next category is Social Security.
The next category is passport and ID, which can also be any immigration paperwork or citizenship
paperwork.
The next category is marriage.
This is marriage, divorce, any prenuptial agreements if you have that.
The next one is car title, which is really any automobiles, so it could be your car,
an RV, a boat, a motorcycle.
The next category is house deed.
This can also be any title insurance that you have for your current house or previous
house as well, any trust documentation.
The next category is wills.
This could be a living will as well or estate planning.
The next category is financial, so anything related to money.
If you had a loan and you paid off your loan and you got a statement and saying your loan
is fully paid off, go ahead and keep that statement inside the financial section.
All of these documents are all documents that you want to keep permanently.
These are all documents that either cannot be replaced or are difficult to be replaced.
That's why we want to isolate and safeguard these documents.
Other financial records are any savings bonds or if you have a safety deposit box.
Maybe you have a list of contents that's in that box, that would go here as well.
Appraisals, so any appraisals for antiques, jewelry or art, or any ownership certificates
that you have would go in that category.
Government, so government is any security clearance paperwork, any military paperwork,
anything related to an audit if you've been audited or any police records or something.
Then the last category is business.
Business can be any copyrights, any trademarks, any patents or any business agreements like
contracts or something.
Really big contracts, that would go in here.
Then the last category I don't have here is legal.
Legal can be like a custody agreement, or final settlement paperwork, or a power of
attorney or something.
But anyways, see what vital records you have around your house.
If you're just getting started and you see this and you're like, "Wow, I really need
to set this thing up," grab a box, grab a reasonable bag, or go out and find an accordion
organizer just like this and go on a scavenger hunt around your house looking for all of
these categories and see what you find.
Maybe you'll find like three out of 12 of the categories, which is a wonderful start.
The next time you can make time to work on this project, maybe you'll find another category
documents.
You just keep iterating and keep making it better and better, and eventually you will
get to this beautiful vital documents organizer.
If you are a person who loves to organize and you're excited about setting something
up just like this, one thing you can do is, make this for someone in your life that is
having a birthday or celebrating something that doesn't love to organize, or someone
that has a lot their plate and they are having a hard time prioritizing organizing.
This would make such a unique gift that really I feel like everyone needs inside of their
home.
Something else you can do is, you can further categorize each section.
So, if you have a lot of financial documents that are permanent, you never want to get
rid of, sort them by category within the financial section.
Paperclip them together, put a sticky note on the cover sheets writing the category of
the name, and put it inside of here.
I hope you found this video helpful.
Again, the biggest thing is to isolate your most important documents and safeguard them
so when you need them, they are easily accessible and they are nice and organized.
If you did this, your future self will thank you for it.
Thank you for being here.
Again, if you are just getting started with paper clutter and you are looking for a great
place to start and you need support, there is a link below.
Thank you for being here and I'll see you soon.
Take care, bye bye.