How do you organize things?

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I use clear plastic poly envelopes. I put a front sheet listing the topic and then jamb everything related into the folder. Whenever I need something all I need to do is find the appropriate folder.

If I am really lucky, when I do finally go through the slush piles, most of the documents I don't need anymore.

Two months after I decided I didn't need my rent receipts, I was evicted when my landlady messed up her records.

That sucks

Well, yes. There is that kind of thing. For things like rent receipts/bills/etc, I pay the bill and scan them into the computer. I use an extremely secure cloud based service called Tresorit. They have servers in several places in the EU. I believe they are located in Switzerland. Everything is encrypted so they can't even access my account. Now, they could disappear, which would not be good. So I keep the really important documents in...now, where did I put them?...was it in that pile?...or the one in my office?...maybe in the top drawer of my dresser?...

I am now being asked to provide certified transcripts of all my college degrees in order to get my agency "qualified" by new rules. What the FK? I hope the universities even have them! I think we are looking at records from 72, 74 and 77.

That might just be some bureaucrat's way of stacking the deck against refugees.

Anyway, folks, what I'm really after here is a fine-grained description of how organized people decide what goes where. What do you do if something seems to fit equally well in two or three places?
After you do decide that, are the other paths lost?
Can you figure out where to look for something, or do you have to try several folders?
Can you usually find what you are looking for fast enough to make up for all the filing time?
How do you decide what the classifications should be?
Do you sometimes divide and merge them to keep the sizes more equal?
Do you have much under "Miscellaneous?"

My AS mother was a summer traveller, and once wrote me "After six moves in six years, I now find myself in my new apartment completely surrounded by boxes marked 'miscellaneous.'"

I go through phases of organization depending on what I am working on. Papers and office supplies which are currently in use and will be used for a long period of time will sit in piles. Usually these piles are by subject or stages. Everything else is organized. I have a lot of notebooks, file folders, boxes, and binders I keep stuff in. If any of these things gets out of place I get really frustrated and it usually results in me buying more organizational stuff even though its not needed.

On another note my DVD collection is organized alphabetically and by disc type. My bookshelf is organized by book genre and size.

all my a/v tapes and CDs and DVDs and Blurays are just in an assortment of found boxes that i repurposed. books are in a similar box situation. the big problem is a bunch of scraps of paper with various important scribblings on them, no way to sort them at all.

Well said. Even trying to organize things leads to a NEW disorganization. I believe this is all part of Executive Functioning Disorder, which I'm guessing is as common among Aspies as our social struggles.

One thing I should try is reviving and refining my previous attempts at organizing instead of starting fresh each time. I've also learned that if I tidy my desk by putting most of the papers in a "Current" file, they will be obsolete before I open it again.
I'm sure that some of my aversion to tidying up comes from school, where it was done on a schedule, almost always interrupting my concentration. I'm finally learning to tidy up after each phase of a job, when there is no benefit to leaving the tools out and handy. If I do that, I still have good memories of why the stuff is on the bench. If I start a couple more projects on top of the mess, the eventual clean up is just a huge chore I tend to avoid.

I think you are looking for what used to be called a "secretary." There is a reason that "important" people don't do all the organization and filing. It is a full-time job.

Again, I think you are asking the wrong group of people. Most of us are very poor at organizing.

I googled around, and you might want to start with something like this:

https://www.lifehack.org/articles/produ ... -done.html

Thanks, but that does not answer my list of questions at all. How do organized Aspies decide what files to create, and how do they decide that an item belongs in just one of them?

mebbe organize them by function in the same way you organize your tools on the rack?

Well, for a while I had my power tools together, but now I leave them near where they get used most often - dust producers in the dusty room. I do have drawers for files, hammers, and scrapers, etc, but where do I put the glass cutter? The swivel-head burr remover? The tubing cutter? Last year, the pop rivet squeezer was so hard to find that I spent an afternoon doing some the hard way, and then bought a new one before finding it with the dymo label maker, another squeezed tool that does forming . . . Currently, the infrared thermometer is hiding very well.

One thing that I am good at is making a scale drawing of my new space when I move, with scale cutouts of my furnishings. I also make a list of what is on which electrical circuit. One mistake I've made is to try to organize a new shop as much like the old one as seems reasonable. That just brought up too many sad memories. Learning a new layout is a huge investment, but it has to be done after each move.

put sharps with other sharps no matter their function, being sharp is their function. put the burr remover with all your polishing/grinding/sanding equipment. tubing cutter goes with the other sharps, as its function is to be sharp. put your pop rivet squeezer [presumably pneumatic] with the other pneumatic attachments. just a suggestion.

I think I'll keep the drill bits and saw blades out of the sandpaper bin.