Cleaning & Organizing
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
How 'organized' are you?
I really wish I was more organized! I'm afraid I've accumulated bad habits from my parents. I let my mail and important papers pile up in boxes. I have a filing cabinet but need to really start using it. How do you stay organized? Do you use a filing cabinet? What do you keep in it? How are your files labeled? What about receipts? Do you keep hard receipts or do you have and use one of those receipt scanners?
Re: How 'organized' are you?
I have a small storage cabinet. It has a shelf and one file drawer. I have 3 binders. One for utilities/bills/etc. One for the house updates we've done, repairs we've done, warranty info, etc. One for our personal use-i.e. doctor visit papers, papers for our pup regarding his vaccinations, healthcare, etc. I also have a small one that I just recently put together to keep track of all of our receipts/estimates/etc for our recent joyride-the tornado/hail damage to our house. We have a million things to keep track of to send the insurance company and I found a separate binder was the most beneficial.
Our files are labeled by what's in the protector sleeves-(i.e. utilities, doctor visits, etc) We only keep receipts for big purchases-standardly. We also keep receipts from Wal-Mart. One thing we decided to do back in January was to keep track of how much we spend at Wal-Mart this year.
We don't keep paper copies of much outside of tax records. DH scans everything from receipts to manuals to health stuff. Everything is backed up on our Time Machine and is sorted into folders such as "Home Repair" "Appliances" "Medical"...you get the idea.
We've freed up so much space in our offices by going digital. DH and I don't like a lot of clutter so shredding paper copies of things was very nice.
*Before we scanned everything, we had a 2-drawer filing cabinet with hanging files. We had tons of folders...for each vehicle, appliances, medical info, tax records, employment info, etc. HTH!
I want to evetually scan and store everything on the computer, but for now I use a file cabinet and household binder.
Here is my blog post about my filing system:
http://melissasimplelife.blogspot.com/2009/10/organization-filing.html
BFP #2: 8/26/12, EDD 5/3/12, M/C 9/4/12
Living Simple Blog
We've gone to paperless billing for most of our bills, so we don't even receive that stuff in the mail. We do have a filing box, but it's mostly vaccine records, birth certificates, marriage license, tax papers, etc.
We scan receipts for big things and save it to a file on our computer. Whenever we do a home improvement project (like our bathroom), we scan those receipts, too. It's difficult to keep track of so many receipts when you make multiple trips for multiple things. If we need to return something, we just print out the receipt and take it with us. We've never had a problem w/ stores taking things back.
It can be difficult to get organized if you currently aren't and it's something you have to stay on top of. It's totally worth it, though.
Once I found a way to manage receipts that was comfortable for me, I felt much more in control of those papers.
Here's what I posted awhile back in response to someone else...
04-10-2011 at 11:12 PM