I’d organize by “theme” or category, not specific rooms. Since I tend to like a degree of continuity between rooms, I think you’d end up with the same information repeated over and over if you split it by rooms. IE – If all the rooms have the same hardwood flooring (eventually), then you’ve got a ton of overlap in your filing and may have trouble keeping everything consistent.

I’ve started a file folder for our renovation project and we’ve mostly got it organized by category — lighting is our focus right now as we’re replacing the ceiling fans and light fixtures throughout the house. Windows are also getting researched, but at this point I anticipate all of the windows being identical (other than size) regardless of room.

For room-specific items, you might make a “furniture and decor” category and then sub-categorize for each room since those are more likely to be room-dependent.

Good luck! I love all your progress on the Underdog and it’s giving me so many ideas for the changes we want to make in our 50’s fixer-upper.

Emma
City Roots, Country Life

I would start with one folder for each room and one folder for each category. The majority of research should go in the category folders, but there will be extras to fill in for each room – all the unique items that are only in one room (like a dishwasher). I would also swap the subcategory organization around, ie, a flooring folder with subfolders for kitchen, LR, etc. I know that makes it harder to “see” the whole room at once, but I think it will be better that way due to the overlap mentioned by Emma above.

I think it depends on how you plan on approaching all of the design. Do you plan on doing one room at a time? Or do you plan on tackling categories, ie. doing all flooring, then paint colors, then lighting, etc.? I’d say organize your folder in the way that will be most intuitive to your work. Either way, I think it’s useful to have the categories organized into the sub-categories. If you decide to organize by room, you can always go the flooring section of another room to see how they look together. Vice versa, you could go to the flooring section and pull out the living room and bedroom sections to compare. Make it work for you!

I am doing something similar for our decorating process. I’m using Pinterest for ideas, inspiration, and I’m-gonna-buy-that-for-the-dining-room type things. I also have a folder for reciepts, shipping/delivery info, etc. That way you have a place for the important documents, but your inspiration is mobile (at least it is for me on my iPhone… I can take my addiction anywhere). But that’s just me, I’m a nerdy engineer who likes to categorize things anyway.

Cool looking folder, too, it looks sturdy enough to survive the reno! I might add a category for appliance manuals as you get them…always good to have them on hand for when the ice maker goes berserk, or there are laundry suds all over the floor :). We had a folder like that to pass along to the people who bought our old house (copies of permits, warranties, manuals, etc.), I think they really appreciated it.

This type of folders great for school stuff, too…with two school age kids with multiple activities, we file all of their stuff in a folder like this so that our house doesn’t become one huge pile of papers!

Reading Carole’s comment reminded me — with Back To School sales starting up, you might be able to get a great deal on those expandable file folders, especially if you end up with a couple different ones (ie – whole house projects, room specific ideas, etc).

Emma
City Roots, Country Life

I would do it by room. It’s how i’m doing it for my house and before I was just doing it in a general “this is what I like and want” but it got too confusing. So now i’m dividing it into rooms. And I’m using Pinterest… it’s great for that, because then I can just pin whatever i live into the “kitchen” board or the “master bedroom” board and then I know just where I saw that pillow or table to whatever…

Go handy hubby!!! LOVE organized men!

What I have realized for our renovation is that the more detailed rooms are the bathrooms and the kitchen. So, I have a thick binder for the house with tabs like electric, plumbing, carpentry (incl. floors), waivers of lien, etc. and a separate tab for the bathrooms; plus a thinner binder for just the kitchen, cabinets, lights, countertops, installation. When it is about decorating, I just put fabric samples, pictures, paint colors on the wall next to my desk and save the links on my computer. Also, I have about three different spreadsheets to keep track of the finance part of it.

I’d organize by decor categories such as flooring, lighting, what your decorating inspiration or colors, etc. will be as I think a home should have flow from room to room. I would assume you’d make a decision like what flooring will be throughout and not by specific room.That said I’d also have a category for each room so you can file away ideas for specific furniture or accessories, etc. So much fun to be able to decorate from the ground up!

cant see the above comments to tell if this has already been said, but i always create tabs for each individual room, and then one tab for flooring, tile, paint, electrical and plumbing

Have been enjoying your blog for awhile now! We are building our new little modern cape cod and I too started with a cute file folder and tabs. As the project has progressed I found my file bulging at the seems. I now work out of a laundry basket that holds not only my file but all of the samples for the house. It is so handy to have all of the tile, granite, wood floor stain, etc with me at all times. We just sold our current home and will be homeless until the new one is ready so having my basket of stuff for the newbie will hopefully keep me organized. I am also using pintrest to organize each room as I finalize my picks. I think I am just down to cabinet hardware, but even that needs to be organized and pintrest has helped me get a good visual of my overall plan. Can’t wait to move to my new place as it is right across the street from my consignment shop. Good luck keeping it all together!

I’m the main filer in our house. We are deep, deep, deep in a renovation of our house and I have a large accordion file with each room or major subject (upstairs bathroom, electrical, plumbing).

Then, I have an additional notebook, kept in the misc. section, that is my design book. It is sectioned off by each individual room and a few sections that are more generic “flooring, windows” where the items will be cohesive in multiple rooms. I clip out images of items I love and paste them into the book with the detailed source and price info. Some of it is just inspiration and some items will be mine. I find it makes it a lot easier to print out some of the items I find on line than trying to dig through my big “House Ideas” bookmarks folder.

Are you on Pinterest? That is a really fun, easy way that I keep everything organized. Although I can see the advantage of having a non-computer related file. I agree with Emma’s first comment; I would probably go by category so there is some degree of continuity throughout (if that’s the look you’re going for). Plus, you may find, say, throw pillows that you like for the living room, but then down the road decide they would be better in the bedroom. It would save you from having to refile things.

Good luck! :) Oh, and your HH is awesome. My husband is so not that organized lol

We used a 3-ring binder when we remodeled our 50’s ranch. We divided it into sections by rooms – it seemed the most straight-forward to us. We used sheet protectors to keep receipts, owner’s manuals & barcodes. We cut off the bar codes from the boxes/packaging and stapled it to a sheet a paper. I was nervous to throw out all of the packaging at first (in case we needed to make a return/exchange), so this was our solution. We also wrote on the paper the name of the store the item came from & the date of purchase. This has made it easy to find the receipt if/when needed. It took a little extra time (when life is already crazy-busy with a remodel), but we have pulled that binder several times in the past 3 years & have always been glad that we took the time to do it. We also made sure to include all of the paint colors that we used.

I would do category then subcategory. Thanks for the idea, definitely going to get myself organized!

Not sure if you answered this or not but where did you get that folder? I’m really liking it and could use one like that.

We are finishing our basement right now. I have been using a file folder like your husband’s to collect ideas/bids and then anything we finalize/make decisions on I put in a pretty binder. I also have a zipper envelope which gets snapped in my binder where I keep receipts. I carry this binder with me often times when we go shopping.

have you tried pinterest? its a way to file all the website you find.

Although mine is not a traveling binder, my file cabinet has half of a drawer that looks very similar to your file binder. My largest files are “windows,” and now “exterior painting.” I imagine that in just a few weeks I will have a file for “exterior lights,” as I foresee that as my next update after a fresh new layer of paint.