Organizing Those Papers

Any parent of a special needs child knows about paperwork. Oh holy batman, the paperwork! Papers for schools, insurance, doctors, government... *shudder* When I was first figuring out about Chelsea's disorders, I just had an overstuffed folder and shoved all the papers in there. Couldn't find a thing without half an hour of shuffling through.

I knew a redo was in order, and now have binders. Glorious binders! for each school year (and one fore early intervention). I find it easier to file papers this way rather than by calendar year because the school sends SOOOOO many papers and I keep paper trails, so school year works best for me.

STEP BY STEP ORGANIZING!!!!!

Step 1: Find all those papers! Everything you need- receipts from therapy (tax deductible, so save them!), prior written notice of meetings from the schools... everything! You can request files from the school, doctors, etc. They have copies. Make one (or several) massive piles in a place away from the kids!

Step 2: Buy colored binders, sheet protectors (hit Costco and get hundreds), tab dividers. For binders, get all the same color, and use a color you don't usually use. I use bright pink. For the tab dividers, DO NOT get the paper ones- they won't be seen once your papers are in sheet protectors. Get those huge colored ones with write on tabs!

Step 3: Sort all papers chronologically- school year, calendar year, by 6 month period, whatever you want and feel comfortable with. This will take forever and a day, depending on how old your child, how many papers you have, and how much patience you have.

Step 4: Label those bad boy binders! I cut strips of cardstock and labeled them as what would be inside (date-wise). Put tab dividers and about a hundred sheet protectors into each binder.

So easy to find things now!

Step 5: Put the papers into sheet protectors in the correlating binder. Don't worry about where it is in the binder. Just get those papers safe inside each binder!

Step 6: Now, label the tabs. For early intervention, I only have tabs for the date, and one for receipts. For preschool, I have tabs for IEPs/ progress reports, evaluations, my paper trail, receipts, and miscellaneous. 

Now that we are going into kindergarten, I have 8 tabs (IEPs, evaluations, progress reports, receipts, notes, paper trail, DSPD (government services), and insurance)

Step 7: NOW you can file! Sort the papers into the correct tab division in the right binder. All the papers that I have to type still (notes from meetings, lecture notes, etc), I keep in the front binder.

Step 8: Hooray!!!! The hard stuff is all done now! All you have to do now is keep it up! I spend 10 minutes a day on this, just have a box on my to-do list for it. That means putting in new papers, typing up notes, reviewing evaluations, etc. Doesn't it look pretty???

Way to go!!!! YOU ARE DONE!!!!