It’s going to be a busy week for me.  Work is trying to get a lot accomplished with a bunch of people out of the office this week, so it’s going to be interesting.  Plus, we’re going to be moving from one part of the building to another (amusingly, back near where I was before they moved us last time) and we’re not sure when that’s going to happen.  Any time before the end of the month, is the rumor.

Outside of work, I’ll probably be at the gym late on Wednesday (Raid Night for Justin), I’m hoping to have a friend over Thursday to watch a movie (Girl’s Night), Friday is Game Night with friends online, Saturday we’ll be helping Habitat for Humanity (ServeFest with the church) . . . and I just realized that I can’t have Girl’s Night on Thursday because I’ve got band practice (unless it’s canceled and it is so often) so I can sing on Sunday morning at church.  And then Sunday afternoon, I’m helping someone clean out her closet while Justin works on her mom’s computer and we’re getting paid in Puerto Rican dinner.

It should all be fun, though.  Just a little hectic.

Today is gloomy and rainy and I really didn’t want to get out of bed so early.  I wanted to stay home, wrapped up in blankets on a pile of pillows reading a book or watching TV.  Or baking.  Baking would be fun, too.  But instead I’m at work, reformatting documents for people who don’t understand Word heading formats very well and trying to decide if I can just cancel the 5S meeting for today because I haven’t had a chance to prepare for it.

Upside:  For lunch, I had shredded turkey (frozen after Thanksgiving) with cuscus (leftovers from Friday) and mixed veggies (also leftovers).  All mixed together in a bowl, it makes a very satisfying and colorful meal.

All said, though, I think I’d rather be at home.

P.S.  I forgot to write about Justin’s meeting with the Dean last week.  It turns out that the professor that Justin didn’t get along with is no longer with the school, so the dean was someone he actually liked!  And it went really well.  He had to send a letter to admissions stating his intention to return and his reasons for leaving.  Later this week, he’ll get back in touch with the dean (and/or his advisor, I can’t remember which) and they’ll go over the changes to his major since he was last in school and what matches up with what he’s already taken and what he’ll need to take in order to finish.  And after that, I guess, they’ll figure out how exactly he’s going to go about getting those classes in — the whole long-distance thing.  So it’s good news!  And  hopefully we’ll have more good news again soon.  Thanks for praying!  Please keep it up!

I only do it at work.  But I just counted and I have seven Kleenex boxes in my drawers here.  Seven is a large number when you consider that there are 130 tissues per box.  (130 x 7 = 910 tissues.)  Seriously?  That’s a lot of Kleenex.

Now, it’s not like they’re just sitting there empty.  That is a very important factor of this hording.  Of the seven, only two of them are empty.  The other five have a variety of objects in them – from tea bags to silverware to personal toilette items.  I’ve trimmed the tops off the boxes and stapled the sides to keep them from falling apart.  I’ve binder-clipped them to the box beside them to keep them from shuffling around in the drawer.  They are my second-hand organizational efforts to keep my drawers in order.  And the two empty ones are back-up, in case one falls apart or I find a use for another box.

Sure they are.

I think I might have hit the point where I’m keeping them because I like keeping them.  Because if I didn’t have a use for the last box 130 tissues ago, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to need a second empty one.

Just like the empty CD spool is going to have some use eventually.

I think it’s time to go through my drawers and do some purging.

So, really, the only reason I’m writing is to put up a couple links.  Mostly this one right here:  Earth911.com

You might not know this about me, but I’m a BIG fan of recycling.  I didn’t get into it much before, but now that I’m in an area where they’ll give me a green bin for me to throw things into and empty it out on a weekly basis, I’m a big fan!  I love being able to do good things for the environment!

So, if I have the opportunity to use a reusable container instead of something that’ll just get trashed, I’ll take it!  We’ve got a ton of cloth grocery bags and a handful of cloth produce bags.  We use cloth napkins instead of paper ones.  I keep on trying to find new ways to live more “green.”

This isn’t exactly a green technique (though I have one of those in a second), this is a website of AWESOME.  I get a lot of questions about “where should I take my [thing]” like broken computers or electronics or batteries or whatever.  This site says where to take it!  And I find that very useful.

No more do I have to wonder what to do with old, nasty batteries!  Now I know where to take them!

On the green technique side, though, I’m trying to get a thing going at work with “mini-bins” where everybody gives up their trash can at their desk and just uses this little trash can.  And I can’t actually find the website right now, but they’re the cutest little trash cans — if they held popcorn, you could probably get about 3 cups in there.  And you put it on your desk and empty it into a trash can in another area once it’s full and recycle everything that you can!  It’s a way to help people realize how much they throw away and how much they could be recycling.  I’ve been using one at my desk for a couple days now and I think it’s very fun.  I haven’t fully introduced the idea to my coworkers yet, but I’ve seeded the idea already and we’ve got a meeting set up for next Tuesday.  I’m excited!

Anyway, that’s all that’s on my brain tonight.  Anyone have any other green-tips that I should try to work into my life?  I’d love to hear them!

I mowed the lawn.  Grass grows differently here in the south, I think, than it does in Wisconsin and Minnesota.  It grows FAST.  And TALL.  I know it’s time to mow the lawn when I’m standing in the kitchen and I can see the tops of grass weeds over the back of the couch and the patio furniture.  So I mowed the lawn and put everything back into the storage closet like it was supposed to be organized.  After a week of pulling things out to go to the beach, the place was a wreck.  But now the patio is back to being a place of calm serenity.

I also took care of the kitchen.  I didn’t really intend to do that one, but I went down to scrounge up some dinner and, well, I had to fill up the dishwasher so I could find the sink.  And then I had to wipe down the counters.  Which meant pulling out the flowers from the vase to add fresh water.  And when I gagged because the rotting stems smelled so badly, I had to throw them into the trash and that bag had to go out to the bin, and what’s the use of throwing out a bag if I haven’t checked to make sure that there aren’t other things that I should throw out?  So I went through the fridge to find what had gone bad, like broccoli and peaches and leftover fish and fried okra.  Which meant that I organized the fridge while I was at it; and then I had to organize the pantry a little, too, because it just wasn’t balanced with one tidy and the other not.  And by the time that was done, the kitchen was pretty much clean.  I still need to do the floor, but I’ll get those all at once.

While I was taking care of that, Justin took care of the laundry, finding all the discarded clothes from the bathroom and bedroom and sorting everything out.  He washed the sheets so we had fresh, crisp sheets to sleep on.  And a couple more loads made it through before the end of the evening, but it’s going to take a little longer before we get all the way through our laundry.

But the house feels nice.  I got up this morning and looked out at the backyard and it looks wonderful.  The grass is trimmed.  The raccoons didn’t get back into the trash can again.  (They got into it the night before to find the watermelon that was tossed out, and they spread it all around the trash can in a fly-covered mess by the time I got there.  I put on latex gloves and a face mask and picked up the whole mess, and then filled a glass jug with water and put it over the top of the bin to keep it closed.  We’ll find out tonight if it kept out the day-time trash-raiders or not.)  The umbrella is up and the table is cleared.  Everything that should be out is out where it belongs and everything that should be tucked away is tucked where it belongs—with the exception of one chair from the table that’s out in the middle of the lawn holding a solar lamp off the ground so it can get some good light.

And I was able to make my lunch in the kitchen and feel like I knew what my options were for available food choices without running into mystery aluminum foil packages and Rubbermaid containers filled with what I think was Miracle Whip that got warm and liquefied.  (I confess, I’m a little confused why the foil-wrapped fish was left in the fridge but the watermelon was thrown away, along with, I assume, the Oreo cookies and the chocolate chip bars.  And 4 lonely M&Ms were left in the candy jar since last Tuesday.  Also, we’re missing a magnet.  Where’d that go?)

But the point is that the house is starting to feel less chaotic and it feels good.  Give us another day or two and we should have it back to normal again.

For a little while anyway.

I really don’t have much to say right now.  I’m thinking about the laundry that needs to get done and the floors that need to get vacuumed and the lawn that needs to get mowed.  I’m wondering what’s white and semi-liquid in that Rubbermaid container in the fridge.  And what happened to all the watermelon and the chocolate chip bars?  And what am I going to make with all these peaches and tangerines?

Hurricane season has officially started and I’m thinking of doing a workshop with a bunch of people to get kits put together and organized for the (unlikely) possibility of an evacuation.  It’s one of those things that everybody here knows that they ought to do, but not a whole lot of people actually spend time doing.  But maybe if I thought of a way to make it more interesting . . . .  It’s something I’d like to do, anyway.

And my head hurts.

I actually have A LOT more to talk about filing, but I’m going to take it elsewhere.  I’ve got the website for my organizing business, so I’m going to post all these over on that site.  And I’ll link to it from here so you can know that I’ve written something, but I won’t post it here so you don’t have be completely excited totally bored overwhelmed by it over here.

I’m writing about it because I’m helping a client through this process right now and it’s helpful for me to write it down so I can work through the whole thing.  Paperwork can be really complicated, so it’s nice to be able to really focus on an aspect of it at a time, work through my thoughts, and get them down really clearly.  But I recognize that it’s not always terribly interesting to read.

I recognize it, but I don’t always understand it.   I mean, how can that not be interesting?

Anyway.  Welcome to the beginning of May, if you somehow missed that change-over.  Did April go by really quickly for anyone else?  And May looks like it’s going to be a very busy month for me.  We had plans to go to the Ren Faire in Atlanta last weekend, but stuck around the house so Justin could be sick at home instead of on the road.  He’s starting to do better, now that we’re on day 7 of him being sick.  Day 8?  MANY days. 

In other news:

• Tuesday is my sister-in-law’s birthday, so we’re trying to figure out how to celebrate that with her when she’s busy celebrating it with all of her college friends.  Plus, she needs to do laundry, so she’s got to come visit.  Mwha-ha-ha-ha!
• My parents are going to be within 6 driving-hours from our house all next week, so on Wednesday we’re going to go meet them half-way between for dinner. 
• Sometime in the next couple weeks my mother-in-law, step-father-in-law, and grandma-in-law are all coming to visit and pack up my sister-in-law for the summer break.  Apparently they may or may not be bringing their adorable puppy.    I don’t know when they’re arriving or for how long they’re staying.
• One of these weekends we’re hoping to go to Myrtle Beach to meet up with a couple friends.   I have no idea which weekend this is happening.
• Some local friends of ours are moving and they’re going to need help moving, I believe, on the 22nd, if we’re in town.
• And if there’s a free weekend somewhere in there, we’re still hoping to make it up to the Ren Faire.

Why does it all have to happen in May?!

Plus, of course, there’s the usual craziness with work.  We’re completing one or two projects each week this month.  Compare that to next month, when we’re planning to complete three in the entire month.  Who creates this schedule?!  Drunken baboons?

 But whatever.  Life is good!  It’s pouring down rain today and even that is good because it’s better than the 85% humidity and burning hot sunshine that we had yesterday.  And I remembered my umbrella.  And I got to talk with both of my parents last night and that was fantastic!  And there was a new Castle when we weren’t expecting one.

So life is busy, but life is good, and I’m feeling happy!  I think I’ll go for a walk. 

I’m not an accountant and I’m not incredibly knowledgeable about all the different financial problems and circumstances that can happen with home finances and paperwork, but let me tell you about some of the things that I found to be useful and how I’ve organized it to work for me.  This is going to be a multi-post series because it’s a big, complicated concept.  But, hopefully, I’ll be able to keep it from being too boring and maybe even share some ideas that you’ll be able to use in your own home.

Now, let me say this first:  Everybody faces their finances differently and handles their organizing differently.  The system I’m going to describe works well for me, but it might need some major tweaking to work for you.  I’ll try to include options as I go through this so you can see other options that might work better for you.  But keep in mind that this is just an option and you can take from it what you like and leave the rest.  (And I did warn you ahead of time, so don’t get upset at me if you decide later on that you wish you hadn’t thrown away that thingamabob.)

In my opinion, after knowing what to keep and what to toss, the biggest problem with establishing and maintaining a filing system is that filing is boring.  It’s dull.  No one likes to file.  Some of us like to have a wonderful filing system, but no one likes to sit there and put papers into folders.  It’s DULL.  So it’s important to find a way to make it so you’ll actually sit down and file the papers that you need to keep.  For me, this means having a beautiful filing cabinet that’s organized in a way that works well for me and is located right in my office next to a comfortable chair.  Once I get a pile of things to file, I’ll sit on my comfortable chair, work my way through it, and be done.  But if I had to stand there and file things in a place that doesn’t make me as happy as my office, I doubt I’d ever do it.  I had to find a place that was comfortable and peaceful for me to keep my filing cabinet so I’d actually sit down and take care of things.

Next, for the most part, there are three different expiration dates for papers – 1 year, 7 years, and lifetime.  Things like bills, if you decide to keep them (and I’ll get to that soon-ish), you should keep for a year.  If the Auditors ever come a-calling, to my understanding, they’re interested in your finances back as far as 5-7 years, but, generally, not any further than that.  And then things like birth certificates, social security cards, and those things you should keep for the lifetime of whoever they’re for, and things like car titles and house deeds and major electronics receipts and paperwork, you should keep for the lifetime of the item.

And, of course, if there are items of significant sentimental value, you should feel comfortable to keep those as well – just so long as you understand the line between keeping sentimental items and hoarding everything.  There’s a huge line there and it crosses into mental illness so if you think you might have a hoarding problem, please seek psychological help.

Okay, I want to keep these from getting too long so that’s where I’m going to end it for today.  But let’s recap quickly:

• There are different theories about how to handle filing systems, but I’m going to try to sort through them and give you a straight-forward way to handle the whole thing.
• You should try to find a place to keep your filing that is comfortable and where you will actually sit (or stand) and take care of it.
• Generally, you should keep papers for 1 year, 7 years, or a lifetime.  We’ll get into what falls into what category in the following posts.

Your homework for today is to think about where you keep your current files (if you have any) or where you’d like to establish your filing and decide if that’s actually a place where you will go to take care of this.  If it isn’t, then try to brainstorm places where you’d feel more comfortable.  Don’t worry if the answer is “In front of the TV” because I can work with that!  Just hang onto your boots!  We’re going to get filing!

I have been up to things though.  I’ve been working on switching things around for spring.  Saturday afternoon I reorganized the porch closet so I could get to the gardening tools and the grill.   I reorganized the dining room closet to move the scarves and mittens into storage and the picnic supplies and bicycle helmets up front.  I reorganized the hamper drawer at the bottom of the steps, packing away the ice scraper and getting the sun screen, bug spray, and umbrellas up and accessible.  And while I was at it, I reorganized under the kitchen sink because it was just a mess and I wanted to be able to grab Windex without crawling all the way to the back of the cabinet.

Yesterday I organized 3 months of receipts, checking them against the categories they were marked as in my budgeting and finding out how many I’m still missing (about 5, for the whole 3 months).  It’s a long task, but rewarding in the end, when I’ve got envelope after envelope of receipts all organized and in rows.  It makes it really easy, come tax time.  I’ve got everything marked down in my finance program on my computer, so I can search for whatever I need, and then I can go to the envelope for that month and look for the physical receipt and read that.  If I need a receipt, I can find it in under 5 minutes.  It’s a system that requires constant maintenance, but one that can really pay off in the end.

I finished my book for March, but I’m not sure yet what I’d like to read for April.  I’ve got to go look through my bookshelf and see what I haven’t read yet, see if anything sparks any interest.  The last book wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as good as some of his others.  Maybe I should do a book review for each book I read?  It would be good for my LibraryThing account.  And my GoodReads account, too.  And if I decide to get rid of the book, it’d be good for my BookMooch account, too.

I have a lot of online book-related accounts . . . .

I lost 2 more pounds last week, bringing my current total weight loss to 16 pounds.  I’m very excited about that.

I’ve been playing Final Fantasy XIII for the last couple weeks, off and on.  It’s a BEAUTIFUL game and I’m having a really wonderful time playing it.  It is, so far, the only game we have for our PS3, but that’s because we bought it to play BluRay discs on, and not for playing video games.  But let me tell you, this game is AMAZINGLY beautiful.  I could sit there just looking at the pretty pictures for hours and be perfectly content.  But there’s also game play and that makes it even better!

I worked a full day again on Friday because they switched up the schedule on me and now I’m behind on a couple of projects.  It’s frustrating.  I keep hoping that I’ll finally catch up to everything, and then they go and move things on me.  I’m getting really frustrated with working more than 40 hours a week.

My allergies are starting to pick up. It’s about the same time as last year, so I’m not terribly surprised.  My eyes itch.  I sneeze a lot.  I’m tired.  I think the grass is out to get me.

And these are just a glimpse of the things that I’m ready to talk about.  There are other things, like improvements to our bedroom and the yard and my photo collection, that I’m not ready to talk about yet because I want to have everything finished before I talk about it.  But we’re making good progress on those things and I hope to have more news on those soon.

Until then, I just have this one last thing for today:

Two years ago today, I stood on shaking knees and pinched toes with sweat dripping down the middle of my back, between friends and family on one side and a gazebo on the other, with candles that kept being blown out by the wind, across from the most wonderful man I’ve ever met, who promised to support and protect me, and who slid a ring as far as it could go onto my stress-swollen finger.  We danced our first dance to music I can’t remember, and his grandfather cut in before the end of the song.  We celebrated and smiled and danced and ate and had a wonderful time with our most precious friends and family.  And then we cleaned up and went home before the rain started.

Since then, we’ve gone through sicknesses and job troubles, celebrations and parties, days when communication failed and days when we worked together in prefect synchronization, days when there wasn’t enough money and days when there was more money than we expected, days when the world in my head didn’t make sense, but he stuck beside me anyway, days when we didn’t have the strength to get out of bed, but we pulled and pushed each other up and stood on our feet and helped each other make it through the day.

People keep making comments about us being newlyweds and honeymooning and that the glow will eventually fade, but we believe that the honeymoon is the rest of the marriage and that we’re the ones actually doing it right.  He brings me flowers when he goes to the grocery store.  I wake him up in the morning with cuddles and kisses.  We call each other at noon and again when we leave work, and sometimes more than that just to hear each other talk.

I love you, Justin Barnett, and I am so happy to be your wife!  Let’s keep it going for another 80 years or so!

I thought I’d drop in quickly and share a little bit of mine.

One of the places that I have the hardest time keeping organized is my desk.  I have a small little desk in my office that has three drawers on the left side and a pencil drawer across the lap of the person sitting there.  I have the hardest time keeping those drawers cleaned out.  What’s supposed to happen is that the bottom drawer has photography things – prints and frames and CDs and manuals.  The middle drawer holds office items like extra printer ink, note paper, clip-boards, etc.  The top drawer holds my address book and my Nintendo DS and my music box.  And the pencil drawer holds my pens, pencils, stapler, tape dispenser, etc.

It’s never as tidy as all that.  I’ve got papers in the top two drawers that I need to read and figure out what I’m doing to do with them, but I haven’t gotten around to reading them yet.  Justin’s transcripts from college are still sitting in my middle drawer from when I was trying to decrypt them back in November or so.  I don’t know why I’m holding on to the prints and whatever else is hiding in the bottom drawer.  I’ve got a whole box of photographs up in my closet, too, that I just need to send to a scanner and get put onto discs.  I’ve got more pens and pencils and scissors than I know what to do with.

What I really need to do is get rid of the desk entirely and work on a table that doesn’t have any drawers.  That way I can’t hide anything in there.

So, that’s my long-term tidiness issue.  My short-term problems are:

• The bathroom, where I tend to drop clothes or whatever else was in my hand when I went to change into exercise clothes or pajamas.  I have a hook on the wall and the back of the door and they tend to get covered in clothing before the end of the week . . . if they make it there from off the floor and the counter.
• The flat surfaces in my office, where bills, paperwork, and other things that should go in there somewhere just get thrown until I have time to go back and try to put them into the right places.  I have a desk, a table, a trunk, a filing cabinet, and a chair that are all good candidates for having things thrown on them.
• The front door, where I throw sweaters, jackets, purses, lunch bags, shopping bags, and shoes as I come in the door.  I really need a set of hooks there so I stop throwing them over the shoe rack and the hamper.  Shoes are my biggest culprit.  I keep some shoes downstairs and most of my dress shoes upstairs, but by the end of the week, almost all of my shoes are downstairs.

I usually find time once or twice a week to clean up these problems, especially on Friday afternoons when I get off work early.  But they build up again in a few days if I’m not really diligent about it.  The kitchen could maybe go on this list, if it’s been a busy week and I’ve not felt up to keeping it clean, but the kitchen is an area where I sincerely try to keep it as clean as I can.

Anyway!  Some of my struggles as an organizer.

It’s a 2-drawer, double-width file cabinet.  The top drawer is active files or files that are important enough to have up top.  And the bottom is the archive space for things that need to be kept for a while but I don’t need to see, possibly ever again.  But it was a mess!  The last time I went through was probably this time last year.  Things seemed pretty organized up through September of last year in a lot of cases.

The big exception was what was taking up most of the bottom drawer.  Several months ago, we got a box full of paperwork from Justin’s mom—medical records, school loans paperwork, all these things that I’d been wondering where they were hiding and suddenly I had them!  Which was great!  But I didn’t have places to put them yet, so they got stuck randomly into folders and stashed away, with the plans of organizing them “soon.”

Friday afternoon I got home, paid the bills, balanced the checkbook, and decided it was Time to Tackle the Mess.

It’s amazing how something as thin as paper can make such a heavy mess.

Also, it’s sometimes really complicated to work someone else’s filing system into your own.

And yeah, it took me from Friday afternoon all the way through Sunday afternoon to finish it up.  But now that I’m done? Ooooooh . . . .  It’s a thing of beauty.

(Geek!)

Anyway, some thoughts about organizing and how I managed my project.  First off, I went through the active files to see what was happening there.  Mostly they were good.  There were a few that hadn’t had anything added for a while, either it’s someone we don’t use anymore or we’ve gone paperless or something.  If the file wasn’t used in 2009, I pulled it to put with the archived info.  And then I separated the data from previous years and paper clipped them together with a sticky note telling which year it was for.  This one thing is going to be a HUGE time saver later on.

And then I figured out how I was going to categorize the files.  I’d started to do this last time—I had a bills section and a loans section, each holding things that had to do with bills (water, electric, cable) or loans (credit cards, school loans, car loan).  Now I also have Automobile, Banking, and Work categories, and a few others.

I didn’t finish up on the top, though, before I hit the bottom.  I pulled out the things that were basically already organized first, just because I felt like doing the easy stuff first and then the harder, but that’s totally up to personal preference.  Again, I sorted out by year so I could see what was what, labeling with sticky notes for easy reference.  I also put sticky notes on the hanging folders so I could flip through quickly.  This one took me a while to figure out but after digging and digging and digging to find the stupid VSAC folders, I finally just put notes on all of the folders and saved myself much time and frustration.

Slowly, I made my way through old bank statements, medical expenses, pay stubs, and so many other things.  I had to take the papers from my mother in law and integrate them into my own system, which probably took me the longest.  Some of what she sent was duplicates of information I already had, some was integrated, but not duplicated, and a lot of it was totally new to me.  So I found what it was, how it fit into the scheme, and organized it by year.

And then I made up a label template on Word, typed up the labels for all the new folders, categorized into sections, naturally, and printed them off.  A little bit of cutting and labeling, and now my file cabinet is fantastic!

There are still a handful of things I need to address—like how long to keep a few things.  I’d assume I could throw them away, but I’m going to double-check it before I do.  Plus, it’s good research.  I didn’t go through one of the folders yet just because it was more than my brain could handle in one weekend, but I’m planning to get through it “soon.”  I promise!

But it’s absurd how very pleased I am with myself about this project.  I kept dragging Justin in to look at my progress.  I had papers strewn all over the floor of my office, stacks of full and empty folders on my trunk and the top of the file cabinet, and paperclips and sticky notes and pens everywhere.  But the files didn’t have paper popping out of the top and I could find what I was looking for and they’re all paper clipped together with sticky notes saying the year!

And did I mention that the reason that’s helpful is because at the end of the year, I’ll pull out the papers from this year, paper clip them together with a 2009 sticky note and put them in the archived folder, pull out anything past its expiration date, and be done with organizing for the (first half) of the year in less than 30 minutes?  Yeah.  That’s going to be sweet.

These are the kind of things that get me excited.

Pictures!

This is my file cabinet

This is the top drawer.

This is the bottom drawer!

This is what I'm shredding so far.

This is what I'm recycling.

And for giggles, this is a paperweight.