Paper Trails

Man, these past 4 weeks have really flown by. I've been steady working towards a more organized space and I wanted to reveal a few more pics of some of my accomplishments in project simplify with simple mom.

Second up was the paper clutter. I had started working on some of our paper so I was glad for this challenge to see the project to completion. I managed to go from the pile of papers below to one family notebook and a nicely organized space in my new "office" ( a spot at the bottom of our stairs. it's all mine and I love it :-))





















I found in doing this project that the biggest problem was that I had no system for papers coming into our house. Things like bills, artwork, school announcements etc. So after thinking it over here is the system that I've put in place. It consists of 4 crucial pieces: 1. A family notebook. 2. A file box for monthly bills, insurance policies and credit card information. 3. An expandable folder for medical information with a section for each family member and a place for general information about our health and life insurance policies. 4. A coupon expanding file folder for useful coupons.

I don't want to bore you to death but here's how I've put the system to work. Step one: Go get the mail. Step two: Immediately put all papers where they belong. Paper bills in the inside pocket of the family notebook, coupons in the coupon file, medical bills/EOBs (we get a bunch of these thanks to our not so great insurance) in the medical file and everything else either shredded or recycled. The key to success has been not getting the mail until I know that I'll have 5 minutes to go through it quickly. This has been in place for 3 weeks and its' working.

For artwork, I have 3 boxes on our bookshelves in our family room area for each of the kids and I place the artwork directly in there. Once they fill up....it's time to purge.

I am really happy with how paper seems to be so much more manageable now. Whenever I have a question of where something should go, I find another hole in the system and figure out a solution.

In addition to the paperwork of a normal household, we are now starting to amass lots of paperwork related to missions. Thanks to my friend Melanie, that beast is under control....phew.

So I hope this all keeps working. Sure feels good to have a better handle on things.