Updated on March 12, 2024
How to Organize Manuals. Six ways to organize home instruction manuals and warranties so you can find the information quickly.
Today, we will talk about organizing all those pesky manuals and warranties you get every time you purchase a new item for your home. I will share several methods of organizing, as I have found different methods work well for different types of product manuals in my home.
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How to Organize Manuals
There are several ways to organize manuals. Nowadays, the easiest way is to find the manual online and save it to your computer. However, if you want to keep paper manuals, you can store them in a box, 3-ring binders, or files for easy access.
Digital Storage
To find your owner’s manual online, go to the company’s website and search for the manual there. Alternatively, you can do a quick Google search by typing in the name of your product + manual.
Create a folder on the computer for the digital files. You can organize even further by creating sub-folders by type or room.
Boxed Storage
Before organizing my manuals, I had a stack of user manuals to sort through, so I shoved them into a box for later. This is the easiest but least organized method of keeping them all together.
Mine was just a leftover shipping box, but you could use some nice document storage boxes and call it a day.
However, when it came time to find a manual I needed, it would take so long to go through the entire box to find what I was looking for.
This is a good temporary solution until you can organize them. It also works if you don’t have many manuals to store. If you are using this as permanent storage, I would suggest plastic storage bins to protect the papers.
Binders
Binders work great for all types of paper-organizing projects. They keep everything together, you can add dividers to make locating what you are looking for easy, and everything stays together.
I have a separate binder for all my furniture assembly manuals and my kids’ toys.
For the furniture instruction manuals, I don’t mind punching holes in them. They are all relatively the same size, so storing them in a binder after punching them with a 3-hole punch works well. Having a heavy-duty punch is helpful for larger manuals.
I used a binder for the kids’ toys because we must get them out and flip them through often. My son went through a phase where he was really into Transformers toys. I could never “transform” them without getting out the instructions.
I chose a large 2″ wide binder and added page dividers to find what we were looking for easily.
My kids tend to collect certain toys, like NERF guns or Barbies. Each of those toys has its own section. For everything else, I divided them by child, outdoor toys, electronics, and the toys they shared.
Note: Although many instructions come in different sizes, I punched them where I could and added them to the binder.
If you don’t want to punch holes in the manuals, use plastic sheet protectors for each one.
You can create separate binders for each category or each room of your home.
Pocket Folders or Plastic Envelopes
For most of our other manuals I created a system using pocket envelope folders and a large plastic bin.
I sorted out all the manuals by categories, placed each category into a plastic pocket folder, and labeled the front of each one using my label maker.
Manual and Warranty Categories:
- Home/Personal
- Electronics
- Kitchen
- Pool
- Outdoors
- Computer/Office
This system is more organized than having them all thrown into a box, but some of the larger categories would take a lot of sorting to find the manual I needed.
When my kids were babies, I had a folder for all the baby items we had purchased. This made it easy to pass along the manuals as we sold the items after we were done with them.
RELATED: More Organizing Ideas
Accordion File or Filing Cabinet
I recently switched from using the plastic pocket folders to a large accordion file. It is compact but allows me to fit all the manuals in one spot.
I can also further categorize and separate the manuals from the broader categories I had set up with the pocket folders.
While sorting everything out and creating your categories, it helps to put a temporary label on each tab before you create permanent labels. I use inexpensive page flags from Target.
The accordion file I purchased has 26 pockets plus 2 CD holders. It is legal size so it fits all the manual sizes easily. Even after adding all the manuals around my house, I still have some space left.
You can use a similar system with hanging file folders and a file cabinet or file box.
Zip Top Plastic Bags
I also use large zip-top plastic bags for sorting manuals. Gallon-size bags work well for smaller manuals.
I have all the kids’ bicycle and helmet manuals in one bag, stored right by the helmets. The bikes and helmets all come with large booklets that would not be easily stored in another way.
I also keep all the tool manuals in a large plastic bag that we keep out in the shed with all the tools.
Where to Store Manuals
I like to keep the manuals as close as possible to the items they are for. You can use a plastic folder for kitchen appliances and keep the manuals in a drawer in the kitchen.
When you move, you can easily leave this information for the new homeowner.
If you don’t want to keep your manuals in different locations, create one central location to keep all of your manuals. This could be on a bookshelf, in your office, or a closet.
Warranties and Maintenance
If an item has a warranty, fill out the information as soon as you purchase it. Your original receipt will have all the purchase information handy.
You can find the warranty cards inside your product purchase, but often now you can find information to register your products online.
Once you have filled out your warranty information online or mailed it in, staple the receipt to the manual. This way, you will have it for future reference. I also like to write the model number, serial number, and any other relevant information on the front of the manual.
If it is an expensive purchase and you are keeping the original box, you could also store the receipt inside the box.
Helpful tip: I like to scan the receipt for very pricey items and keep a digital copy on my computer. This way, if the ink on the receipt wears out, you still have a copy that you can use to show proof of purchase.
Once per year, review your manuals and pull out any manuals for items you no longer own.
So tell me, how do you organize your home manuals?
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