First, I would suggest organizing your financial records by month instead of by category. It saves you time because you don't have to individually file each paper. After paying the weekly bills, all receipts go in the folder for the month. Also, when you need to archive a year or two, it is already by date. But what if you need a certain receipt for some thing; most times I can remember approximately what month something happened in to find a receipt. I personally organize my financial papers with two folders for each month - one for "personal" and one for "business".

Second, create a good habit of doing your financial to-do's on a systematic basis either 5 minutes per day or 35 minutes per week. Every Friday, I pay bills and update my Quickbooks.  If you have a business, do your business bookkeeping every month or week so that at tax time, you don't have sooooo much to do. It will help lessen the feeling of being overwhelmed and stressed out about needing to get it done. Can you imagine the feeling of abundance in coming to tax time very organized! I can see it for you.

Lastly, envelopes - large and small are your friends for organizing your financial receipts.  Envelopes are the best low tech way to organize your receipts. The important factor of the envelope system is to write the details of the expense on the outside of the envelope and this way you never have to look at the actual receipt again.  Adding up the expenses by category on the outside of the envelope is easy compared to looking at individual receipts. It also saves time when you are trying to locate one receipt in particular, should you need it for anything. People who use cash for business expenses are always struggling to summarize and the envelope system might add an abundance of more deductions to your taxes.