Project 15: Ticket Storage

Those who know me (and Matt... well, mostly Matt) in real life know that we go to a ton of concerts because we are music fanatics. Seriously, we go to anything and everything, from local shows to reunion tours to big name acts of the moment. And we have aaaalllll of the ticket stubs to prove it. They've been scattered all over the place for far, far too long, and I am thrilled to finally have a way to store them

The new storage solution with a random sampling of ticket stubs.

While visiting Portland (Oregon) a few weekends ago, we wandered into Powell's Books (which you absolutely must visit if you are ever in Portland because it is ridiculously awesome) and found the Ticket Stub Diary. It has a ton of pages, and three different sizes of sleeves that hold most standard ticket stubs. Awesome! I'm working on cataloging our tickets as we speak.

The Dreaded Taxes

Does anyone actually like doing taxes? I personally don't mind it, although I can think of a million other things I'd rather do. But most people I know detest it and either put it off as long as possible, or hire someone/buy a computer program to do it for them. I think maybe I'll be changing my tune at this time next year, though, when there are more elements that I'll have to consider and keep track of.


I guess I'm still lucky in that my taxes are fairly simple and straight forward - I live in a state without an income tax, and my federal taxes consist only of my W-2, savings account earnings, education credits, and my 1040 Form. I still print the 1040 off of the website, fill it in with a pen while consulting my trusty graphing calculator, and mail it in with an old-school stamp. It's not that I'm not computer savvy, I just find it easier to finish them this way without having to worry about internet connections and program time outs, etc. Until the government makes me go paperless (or they get so unmanageable that I can't do them myself), this is how I will continue to roll.

I actually sat down and banged 'em out (with the help of the not-so-easy-to-navigate IRS website) in an hour last night, and was pleased to find that my return will be approximately $750 this year! Hooray! That's by far the biggest return I've ever had, and I'm not quite sure what I want to do with it when it comes. Realistically, most of it will go into savings and paying off my remaining student loans, but it'd be nice to get myself some sort of treat, too.

What are you going to do with your tax return this year?

Project 14 - Recipe Storage - Part 1

Over at Org Junkie, I've been reading all about organized recipes and cookbooks - this month's focus for the monthly round-up. Most of the time, I get my recipes off the internet or from my favorite cookbooks, but occasionally I write them down from library cookbooks, or clip them out of magazines, or have them emailed to me. This cork-board in my kitchen has become a landing place for all of them, mostly because I have nowhere else to put them:

Kind of unwieldy, no? I swear, I'd never intended for it to get that bad. I just didn't really have a place to put my recipes, and I've found that shoving them in between pages of cookbooks led to me never finding them again. That is, until I went to Michaels, perusing around the dollar aisles to see what I could find. I happened upon these:

For $4, I got a cute little recipe box and 60 recipe cards! Now to successfully transfer everything over.... I'll post a before and after picture when I'm done.

Project 13: Stationary Supplies

Despite the fact that I am absolutely horrible at keeping in touch with people, I really enjoy writing and sending letters and cards. Even in the age of email, there's something so fun about getting a physical letter from a far-off place (haha, I just made Spokane sound whimsical)! Unfortunately, I've had my address book, cards, stationary, and card making supplies spread all over my apartment for the last year, making it incredibly difficult to find anything when I needed it. This, of course, meant that I didn't end up sending what I needed to (uh... Christmas cards? Yeah, those didn't happen). So this weekend, I embarked on Project 13: Stationary Supplies, to organize all of my thank-you notes, stationary, cards, etc.

Step 1: Round it all up in one place.

Card making supplies and stationary.

Step 2: Neatly arrange it all in a pretty box.Everything all neatly arranged in it's new home!

Step 3: Put the lid on and store that bad boy!
So much prettier and easy to find!

The most important part of this process was getting rid of all of the superfluous packaging! I didn't realize how much space a little pack of thank-you notes took up because of its little box - and when you have 10 little boxes, so much room is lost! Also, the box I used is a photo storage box from Michaels; when I bought it, they were on sale for under $4 a piece. They fit cards and envelopes very nicely, and come with little dividers that you could use to separate cards by type if you wanted. I highly recommend them.

Storing Magazines

I love love LOVE magazines. I love getting them in the mail. I love flipping through the pages and seeing all the glossy photos and the bold headlines. I even enjoy the ads; it's the bright colors, creative photography, and snappy wording that gets me every time. Unfortunately, this means I have a LOT of them, and there is nothing harder than trying to declutter a ridiculously huge stack of magazines.

My magazine storage bin at home.

You're probably wondering - what the heck is that binder in there for? Well, that's my magazine decluttering secret! Every time the bin gets full, I take all of them out and put them "in the binder". Let me show you how it works:

Magazine, binder, three-hole punch, paper, scissors.

Basically, the reason that I usually hold on to a magazine is for an article or two - but what's the point of keeping an entire magazine just for that? If the article is double-sided, I rip the whole page out, hole punch it, and stick it in the binder. If it's a smaller article, only taking up part of a page, I clip it and attach it to a sheet of notebook paper. Then the magazine gets recycled!

Finished product!

It is so much easier to flip through the pages of a notebook looking for an article than shifting through a stack of magazines trying to remember which one it was in. Anyway, I just thought I'd share this little tip with you all - it's helped me keep down the clutter tremendously.

Project 8: Decluttering Financial Paperwork - An Update

It's been a while since I originally wrote about my shred-happy day of organizing my financial paperwork. So far my significantly down-sized accordian folder has been serving me well - not that I've totally stayed on top of the filing, but the piles of important papers have been significantly reduced in size and number.

I wanted to share a step in the paperwork decluttering process that I completed this past weekend that I feel will be of immense benefit to my personal finances and sanity. This past Saturday, I cancelled all of my store-specific credit cards. There are 4 reasons that I did this: 1. Once I'd bought the things I needed from each one using the enrollment bonuses, the rewards really weren't that great for each card; 2. They encouraged even more spending at stores I frequented too often anyway; 3. getting 4 statements a month (plus updates to card plans and all that) is a LOT of paper; 4. God help me if I ever lost my purse (or worse yet, it got stolen) and I had to call all 4 and go through the cancellation process AGAIN (seriously folks, this took me well over an hour's worth of phone calls, and I wasn't even trying to request new cards).

Instead, I've opened up a new credit card that I can use anywhere with a pretty nice credit limit that far eclipses the 4 former cards' limits combined (hooray credit scores). This card will give me perks outside of coupons at stores that I've already bought the things I need from - namely, free airline tickets. YES. It's one card with one statement, which means one bill to pay instead of 4. Basically, I'm much more likely to pay the bill on time, much less likely to keep contributing to my habit of frivolous spending spawned by $10 off coupons that I got for rewards from the individual store cards, and I'm much more likely to get something beneficial out of it (if I can get even one free flight anywhere, that's worth it to me).

I know this won't work for everyone, but I've already seen a noticable improvement in the amount of paper I have to hold on to. My purse is lighter, my spending habits aren't killing as many trees, and Linens-N-Things is going out of business and won't honor their credit card coupons anyway. Plus, all that shredding is kind of theraputic. :D

Project 8: Decluttering Financial Paperwork

Well, I've officially started the process that I talked about awhile ago. I'm so lucky that Org Junkie just happened to post about office organization today! Basically, what I did was go through my current accordian folder to find things that could be shredded. Then I went through my stacks of paperwork to figure out what could be thrown away immediately, what needed to be acted upon, and what needed to be shredded. I came up with this pile of stuff for shredding:



After the shredding takes place, then it's time for filing! Unfortunately, my accordian file is already exploding even though I haven't filed any of the new stuff. I'll need to find something that better accomodates what I've got. Then it's on to consolidating credit cards and finally making a budget. Hooray!

Project 1 Update!

To assist with the onslaught of paperwork and important items that are brought into our apartment by way of mail, friends, work, school, etc. I decided add a basket that would collect items before they can be sorted. So now, I have a kitchen bulletin board (for kitchen related papers), a regular bulletin board (for everything else) and a basket to keep the mail from going everywhere. My counter has never been cleaner!

Preparing to tackle my financial paperwork

This is a picture of the counter top that serves as our dumping ground for every important piece of paper or mail that comes through our front door. It's a good thing it's so big! This is undoubtedly one of the most difficult parts of the condo to keep organized, and it's actually a miracle that it looks this good in the picture I took earlier this week. :)

The bane of my existence for the last several years has been developing a small, concise system that I can use to keep track of my bills, bank statements, tax returns, paycheck stubs, and all the other variosu pieces of important financial information that seem to flood into my condo. I realized this January as I was searching for important tax information that I still had in my possession every single pay check stub I'd ever received - since my first job nearly 10 years ago - and that they were in NO WAY organized.

I did some google searching (and blog reading) today about what kinds of documents are really important to keep for an extended period of time, and which ones can really be disposed of after awhile without risking any potential damage. I thought that this document provided the most realistic and helpful guidelines about time frames for particular types of documents.

So tonight, I think I'll go invest in a paper shredder! I have two accordian folders that I've been utilizing for a year or so, but they need a drastic overhaul. This will be a weekend-long project I feel, but it'll be so nice to have it done and out of the way!

Project 1 - Keeping Papers in the Kitchen

One of the first things that I knew I had to do something about when we moved into this place was the crappy old bulletin board that the previous tenant had put up on the kitchen wall. It was literally in pieces, with little fragments still attached to the heavy duty tape he had used to keep it on the wall. And, try as though I might (with my bare hands and soap and water, that is), I could not get the remnants of that tape off the wall!

So, on my last trip to Target, I perused the school supplies section for locker materials (I know, I know, so junior high). I got a package of 4 pieces of cork board for $10, and a $5 magnetic dry erase board. Both of these items were originally intended for lockers, so they fit perfectly in the oddly shaped space on my kitchen wall. To avoid making the mistake of the former tenant, I used some extra ribbon from a previous craft project to hang the left-side bulletin board instead of the super sticky wall tape in the package (I used the wall tape for the white board and bulletin board on the right side, because I figured a couple extra spots on the wall wouldn't be markedly different than what was already there).

I figure the left side will be used for important mail items like bills to be paid, important letters and invitations, and other items not to forget. The right side will be used for kitchen related papers, namely recipes I receive from people (I get a lot, surprisingly), coupons, grocery receipts, etc.

And of course, any chance I get to leave Matt a little note is welcome in my book!

Before


After