Thursday, February 24, 2011

Managing Paperwork

I realized this morning as I was putting stuff away that I wanted to write a post about our home binders, something I teased a while ago. These are still a work in progress, as I don't think any organizing system can be truly judged (and adjusted, in my case) until it's been tried out. So far, this is a pretty good solution for us, so here's what we did.

When we built my new desk, we moved my old desk upstairs. It has really found its calling as a grown-up bedroom desk, as I knew it would. I keep all of my cards, paper and envelopes, stamps, address labels, in the drawers, and on the shelf nearby, we have our binders. We have one for house stuff, one for other bills, and one for personal stuff and Shelby stuff.

In our house binder, we keep manuals, utility bills, receipts and proof of any upgrades we've done, and paint samples. Essentially, this will be the book that will have any relevant information when/if we ever move. I also plan on doing some before and after pictures, just because that could be kind of fun for us to see how we changed the house.

Our second binder has insurance information and other bills and account information we might need that doesn't necessarily relate to the house. The third has everything else, including Shelby's vet records and camp bow wow application.

We keep plastic sleeves in each binder, so we don't have to hole punch anything and everything stays together. Then it's just a matter of choosing the right binder and pulling out what we need.

I also plan on doing a binder for recipes and meal plans, so that hopefully putting in a bit of time now will save me some time later. This way, I can rotate in recipes we like and make it easy to find what I need that night or when I'm making a grocery list.

So there you have it, a simple-ish way of getting organized when combining two lives.

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