Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you would have noticed that in the last two months, the Marie Kondo craze has taken the world by storm. Households all over the world have been quick to embrace her decluttering, cleaning and organising techniques for the family home. You might ask, what has that got to do with migration and applying for a visa to Australia?

Ensuring that your important documents are filed and stored in a way that is easy to find will help guarantee a smoother application process. Having your documents readily available will also ease your own stress and help the Department of Home Affairs process your application more quickly. Here are some tips inspired by Marie Kondo on maintaining a well organised and easy to find set of documents for your visa application.

Keeping important personal documents in a safe place

Your most important documents especially when applying for a visa are the ones that confirm your identity. This includes your passport (current and expired), birth certificate, citizenship certificate and marriage certificate. National identification cards and driver’s licence are generally carried with you, but if not, then keep them together.

For businesses applying for sponsorship approval or to sponsor an overseas worker, the most important documents are those that verify that your business is actively and lawfully operating. Examples include your business/company registration certificate from ASIC, ABN registration letter from ABR or business activity statements (BAS).

These documents need to be kept in a safe place as they form the basis of any visa or business sponsorship application. It is best to keep it somewhere that is secure but also easy for you to access.

Steps to organise all your ‘paper’ documents

1. Gather and organise your documents

According to the ‘KonMari’ method, the first step is to gather all of your documents and paper files and place them in a pile. Next, you will need to sort them into a few different groups. Marie Kondo suggests organising them into three groups:

• Pending documents - items that require action (letters, outstanding bills etc)

• Important documents - papers that you need to keep permanently (birth certificate, contracts etc)

• Miscellaneous - papers that you refer to often (recipes, papers from a seminar etc)

The idea is to get rid of as many paper documents as possible. Items that are pending can be dealt with another day - the idea is to get through all the paper documents in one go.

2. Plan, label and file your documents

The next step is to organise the documents you wish to keep. A good way to organise your documents is to create specific categories and labels that are easy for you find when you need a specific document. Marie Kondo suggests a clear plastic folder is sufficient, however we have found that if you own a business, you’ll need to separate these from your personal documents.

Similarly if you have documents that are digital, you can put them into folders that make sense to you on your computer.

3. Maintaining your new filing system

Keeping your documents and files organised can be tricky. The best way to ensure that you maintain your new filing system is to have all your documents and files in a location that is easy to access. If they are electronic files, then you may want to consider signing up for a secure cloud storage system such as Google Drive or Dropbox so you can access them whenever you need it. This is especially useful when you want to send documents to your migration agent.

One last and final tip from Marie Kondo is to keep items that “spark joy”. So ensure you use folders or storage boxes that make you feel happy!

If you need help applying for a visa to Australia, contact us at Titan Migration to arrange a consultation or alternatively, book a consultation online.

About Peter Chang

Peter Chang is a registered migration agent based in the Western Sydney hub of Parramatta, Australia. He is the co-founder of Titan Migration, a consultancy specialising in providing Australian immigration advice and visa assistance services.

Read Peter’s full profile