The Paper Demon…the evil being that spreads loose papers with important information around my entire house. Stuffed in notebooks, shoved into drawers….the baby’s appointment is on this one…where is that receipt I put down here.
I happen to have a little bit of an addiction to organizing. I’m lazy so often the organization doesn’t stick-but that doesn’t deter me from trying to organize it again. In my wildest dreams I have everything organized so perfectly that my house just cleans itself (I also dream about being able to pack everything into one bag a la The Sword in The Stone…anyone remember that?)
Okay so I happened to find a great method for dealing with most of my loose information paper. Things like magazine articles, handouts from the pediatrician, newspaper articles…stuff that you want to keep to refer back to but shouldn’t be lying around your house in the open.
I’m going to use a magazine article for example to show you how the system works. I keep a magazine box right by the front door (it’s actually in my china cabinet..hehe…but seriously this works so well that I almost want people to ask why I keep this stuff in there). I don’t have time or willpower to deal with the magazine the minute it comes in from the mail, so it gets shoved in here until the box is full I’m ready to deal with it.
When it’s time to clear the magazine box out, I just grab a magazine that I’ve already read and quickly page through it.
Okay so I want to keep this page. I like the chedder cheese and apple and want to remember that.
So I just rip the whole page out
Usually I’m doing this while waiting for water to boil on the stove or in between serving the baby his nine course dinner (see why I like to keep all this in my china cabinet!). Typically I just throw these loose pages into a folder in my bills’ sorter…which right now looks like this.
Yeah…so obviously I’m not the world’s best organizer…but anyways, usually I just throw the loose page/article in a folder in here: To Be Filed: Binders.
But for the purpose’s of this post I’m going to skip this and go right to my binder.
In this binder (yeah I have two of these for this kind of paper) I have tabs sepereated by rooms/sections of my house where I keep articles or pictures of decorating I like/paint color/organization tips
Stuff like
an article about closet organization and caring for your clothes from a Lucky magazine I read in high school.
I’ve succesfully kept it that long thanks to binders. I mean…do you notice it explains how to fold a wrap sweater, or that you should stack your heavier knits on the bottom of the pile?
Or articles like
the perfectly organized home office.
I also keep three very important sections in this binder.
Where I stuff things like
my actual first edition hospital bag list. Apparantly I was afraid of forgetting the carseat.
Also did you know that choking is like a major cause of death. I have those CPR instructions in here.
And vaccine information sheets the pediatrician hands me.
Anyways…I also have a section for new recipes.
That is where my magazine article is going to live, right next to the monkies.
At one point I bought a ton of sheet protectors and just use those for magazine articles since they are hard to hole punch in an orderly fashion. I double them up and it works great and keeps everything neat and tidy.
This page is also in here…in “odds and ends”. It’s also from high school…I clipped all the little beuty tips relevant for my skin (olive) and glued them to one sheet. I’ve kept it ever since.
And if I wear makeup, blush is the first thing I put on.
I have a second binder.
but I’ll cover that one tommorow.
Tags: paper clutter
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on Friday, March 19th, 2010 at 11:45 am and is filed under Organization.
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I TOTALLY dig this! I really try to be organized myself and have made a lot of progress in that department but am still not where I want to be. I love this idea. I especially like your ideas on what to do with magazine articles you like.