I love organizing. And reorganizing. So over the last week or so I’ve decided to update my household organizers. OK, I guess the knitting one doesn’t really count as a “home organizer” per se, but having all of my Internet patterns printed and filed sure beats my previous system of disorganized bookmarks in my Web browser. Naturally the first thing I wanted to do was pick out pretty paper for the covers. Easy! Especially since Michael’s had a sale last week. Then I bought a bunch of dividers at Walmart. I can never find what I want there, though. I thought the dividers would probably be near the pens and pencils, right? No. They were next to the shipping boxes. Of course, that makes perfect sense! [/sarcasm].
At any rate, I did find them and buy some. The only bad thing is that they are smaller than my pages which kind of defeats the purpose of dividers. Sigh. They’ll do for now, though. It was a huge task working on my recipe binder, but I think it was really worth the effort. Not only did it cut way down on a mountain of magazines, but now I might actually be able to find recipes quickly! I’m still finishing up the Household Organizer, but at least now all the take-out menus, warrantees, and things like that are stuck in it. Next week I’ll finish it up. The School Binder is pretty self-explanatory. I made it last year (though I just got around to the pretty paper 🙂 ). I keep a copy of the school calendar, communications with the teacher, receipts for extracurricular activities, etc. It has come in handy so many times!
I do have one more organizer, but I’m thinking of writing an entire post about soon: my coupon binder. Since I started playing the “drugstore game” in January, I developed a need for an efficient coupon system. My index card box just wasn’t working. I’ve been using the binder system for a little over a month and I’ve found it to be worth the time investment of filing everything because finding the coupons I need, and culling expired ones has become so simple!
What kinds of systems (if any) do you use for home organization or coupon organization?
I really need to redo my recipe binder….weed out the ones we never use, seperate the favorites into their own section, etc. Right now it’s a mess, with random printouts and photocopies stuffed in!
My coupons live in a large check file, seperated by type of food. (breakfast, beverages, soymeat/dairy, snacks, etc) It’s big enough to hold them all, but small enough to be portable.
Wendy
I’m an organizational nut too, though I have my good periods and my not so good ones. One binder we have is the warranty binder where we put warranty info (and sometimes rebate info -copies anyhow) in with the original receipts. It’s saved our bacon once or twice. Recipes are always in a state of flux/disorganization … I want to store and access them all on the net, but of course there’s some from books or magazines or days when I just don’t want to drag out the laptop … then I print … but I don’t want to have to re-print, so then I have a rag-tag bunch of junk that just gets stacked in a pile until I get grumpy about it and punch it and stick it in a binder that has no method to its madness. It’s always interesting to see how others organize these things …
I just use a recipe card box for my coupons, but it’s stuffed to overflowing, so I need a better system. Looking forward to hearing about yours!
My face is a disaster too and it’s making me so very grumpy.
I just stopped by Pope Street to fill up some down time at work and your hubby always make me laugh out loud. I’m sure all these little jr. high brats are wondering why I’m cracking up. But seriously, he should write a book.
Ooooh, those look GREAT!
What other stuff do you have in the household organizer? I’d love a peek inside 🙂
I use a big black binder for all the household favorite recipes and recipes I want to try out that I’ve ripped out of magazines, etc. I have a file box with folders that are labeled as ‘TAXES’ (for stuff I’m saving for that time of the year), ‘WEDDING’ (for contract copies related to our wedding), MEDICAL 2008, etc…. I have a coupon file too, but unfortunately it’s empty right now…