Organizing #1

While I'm off celebrating my 1st anniversary, I thought I would keep you entertained with my organizing adventures.

My constant motivator, Angie, mentioned on her blog a challenge that IHeartOrganizing developed for 2011.  A monthly challenge of organization.

So let's start at the very beginning, January.  A challenge of organizing the paper in your home.

Now, my files and folders are not very pretty.  And someday I hope to change that.  But for now, I couldn't be happier.

I had bags and bags of papers that I threw away or shredded.  I'm talking TONS.  Because I just never really new how long to keep somethings, and honestly I didn't even know what some of the papers were, so I didn't feel safe tossing them.  But this website laid it all out.  What to keep and for how long.

So what I did, I wrote down on the front of each folder how long to keep everything that is in that particular folder.

I have a folder for:

• Employee Benefits
• Dogs
• Home
• Insurance Policies
• Medical/Dental
• Retirement/Social Security
• Safe Deposit Inventory
• Tax Info
• Warranties
• And the big flowery thing with a handle at the bottom of the photo is an accordion folder that I keep all of my receipts in, separated by month.

Just doing that much taught me alot about the different documents I need and have.  And being able to find them in less than a minute?  Amazing.

As you may have noticed, I listed a safe deposit inventory.  I don't really feel like putting the specifics down for this because of how public this blog is.  But I was thinking more and more about this lately and realized how important it is to have certain documents protected.  A fireproof safe would work, but I don't have one, so I worked out something else.  

What I've decided to keep protected are the documents as recommended by consumer reports (linked through the IHeartOrganizing blog in her January challenge), as well as an external hard drive.  The external hard drive I will discuss tomorrow :) 

Still Need to Do (for this challenge):

• I still have some things on my to-do-list that I need to collect for my safe deposit box. 
• And my ultimate goal is to organize all of my notes from PT school into something more manageable and more helpful.  Maybe next year on that one, haha.  No, hopefully I at least start it soon.
• And ideally Malachi and I will also create advanced directives and all that good stuff.

But all in all, this challenge changed my life for the better.  I feel like I grew up a little and am a little more prepared.