What home paperwork should you keep?

A calm filing cabinet works best when it answers real-life questions, not when it keeps everything forever.

Bills and receipts

Keep bills and receipts when they prove a payment, support a warranty, help with a tax return, or explain a recurring cost. You do not need every supermarket docket.

insurance invoices and policy schedules
utility bills with account numbers or unusual charges
rates, water, body corporate, or property-service bills
receipts for appliances, repairs, warranties, and higher-value household items

Insurance

Keep the current policy schedule, renewal notice, premium invoice, claim correspondence, and anything that proves what is covered. Archive old policies by year so the current one stays easy to find.

Tax and income records

Keep documents that explain income, deductible expenses, donations, interest, dividends, rental-property costs, or business costs. Use your local tax year. If unsure, keep the record and ask a qualified professional later.

Identity and legal

Keep scans or references for passports, birth certificates, wills, trust documents, powers of attorney, marriage certificates, and other high-value records. Store these more carefully than ordinary bills. Do not paste them into random AI tools.

Warranties and manuals

Keep receipts, serial numbers, installation records, warranty PDFs, manuals for expensive items, and service history. Put the model number in the filename where useful.

What not to keep

Avoid clutter from expired marketing PDFs, duplicate downloads, unread newsletters, routine shopping emails, and app notifications that do not prove anything.

The simple rule: if the document could help you prove, renew, claim, sell, repair, tax, insure, or hand over something important, file it. If it is just noise, delete or ignore it.

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This is an organisation guide, not tax, legal, financial, accounting, or compliance advice.