Hello Mark and welcome to JustAnswer!
I did that same work for my office and I will describe what I did which I hope may give you some helpful ideas.
First I organized my place by access priority, that's assigned the closest file cabinet for the papers I will need most and the farhest for stuff that I will need once a month or less.
The second step was sort the stuff by their priority which took the greatest time but usually the forms/sheets are of highest priority (sort of "input" material) and then business letters, invoices etc. I also have 3 baskets of incoming, processed and outgiong papers that I don't keep in file cabinets.
Since I have 3 file cabinets I separated my files/papers into 3 piles, then sorted every pile logically and for every category I prepared a separator with a big yellow printed label which I separates files of different categories apart. These separators are placed in alphabetical order. Outside the drawer I have a list which indicates in alphabetical order the categories.
So when I look, say for a paper about a new technical approach I know my it's in my "miscellaneous technical" drawer, which is in my farthest third file cabinet. I pull open that drawer and find the yellow separator "technical papers", my files are actually transparent pouch type and there's a label with a few keywords relating to the contents of the paper(s), like "pneumatics, new technology, calculations".
Let me know how you like these and also if I can be of any further help.
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