I shall be organized.

I tend to be a pretty good organizer. Rather it be an event, a cupboard or my "to do" list. I had to learn very quickly how to best use space when I moved from a 2100 sq ft house to a small 2-bedroom apartment in my late 20's. Then again when we had two kids back to back in a 1300 sq ft house (along with 2 dogs and a cat). In our last house the boy's room didn't even have a closet. And might I add I love shoes and live in a small house? Big problem. So as you can guess, there will probably be a few posts about this topic as we unpack and address storage in Schrallville.

To get a jump start, I decided I needed to work on my office filing system. The stack-folders-in-a-box system wasn't working anymore. Plus, I found myself not really having a great system for all our personal items. You know, insurance, finances, passports, birth certificates, etc. It was sort've organized in one of those file boxes but it wasn't ideal. And Daniel had no idea where to find things.

Imagine my delight when I bought the Better Homes and Gardens Storage Summer 2013 issue recently and found a perfect solutions. I am always looking for ideas and this is by far the best idea I've found thus far for an office. I've tweaked it for my own personal needs but it's generally the same.

Essentially you divide your life in to four sections and color coordinate accordingly. They recommend using colored hanging folders but I didn't have those so I settled for colored folders instead. I'll just use the generic hanging folders to store my colored folders. I also tweaked the colors for what I had on hand (green, blue, yellow and pink) and didn't bother to make sure they all were left, center or right tab folders. That was a bit too much detail for me. This doesn't address the work folders but that's not as complicated since those are sorted by client.

Here's a picture of their system so you can see what I'm talking about with the differences.

 

So here's my system:

1. Financial (green folders) - banking, credit cards, investments/retirement, mortgage, employment (one folder for each), property assessments, taxes, utilities and wills/estate planning. I'm also including our rental agreements/leases (one folder per renter) in this section since it's income. You get the picture!

2. Insurance/Vehicles (blue folders) - anything related to vehicles, health insurance, property insurance, titles, life insurance, home warranty, etc. Essentially anything that has to do with insurance or cars.

3. Personal (yellow folders) - I'm starting with one file per family member but may expand from there. For instance I'll put birth certificates, passports and other things like this in this section. I am also including pets in this section. Other topics in this section could be church, sports, vacation, hobbies, mementos etc.

4. Home (pink folders) - this is for home projects, warranty info, repairs, landscaping, home owners info (if applicable) and anything else related to our properties.

I've finally taken the time to go through the documents not already packed and will finish it up when we move.

Next step: buy a file cabinet to put it all in!

This may not excite many people but it sure does excite me! I'm weird. I know.