2012 Organize project 1

First things first: I *borrowed* Tiffany's whole mail station setup from The Nest Effect. I just loved it so much and couldn't think of another way to handle my mail situation. Thanks so much for the inspiration Tiffany! (If you haven't visited her blog, you have to. It's amazing!)

I am calling this 2012 Organize Project 1 because it's the first one this year and it is on my desk in our office. Since we are a family of five, trying to save money, me trying to finish school this semester, and having 3 girls with busy schedules I knew we needed an organized area for our stuff. With the new year I wanted to get everybody organized more effectively. I hate for my counters and kitchen to be covered by the messes of the stuff that has to be taken care of. We got 2 trays in the Target Dollar section one to put on Jason's desk for incoming mail and one to put on mine for the girls to put the stuff I need to look at on my desk. However, we still needed somewhere to put the rest of the stuff that comes in and out of our house. Such as receipts, coupons, recipes, etc.

Process: 

This morning I decided to head down to the basement and get the black box that was patiently waiting to be loved on and gathered any extra hanging holders we had around the house.

I created my own calendars for the rest of the year with calendar labs. I use Bic Mark It Markers to give for  everyone a color code to correspond to something that belongs to them. I use almost the exact same color in my erin condren planner but with the papermate flair pens because those don't bleed through the pages.

After:

The categories I used were:

• outgoing mail: holds things that need to be mailed out, but need attention before mailing
• to file: items that need to be filed in my filing cart or put away elsewhere
• receipts: incoming receipts that need to be filed
• coupons: unclipped coupons (printed and from the newspaper)
• grocery ads: finally, a place for the grocery ads -- I always find a way to misplace them
• recipes: I print and clip way too many recipes, so they can sit in this folder until I can take the time to put them where they belong in my recipe binders
• Kerigan: items for her
• Liv: Items for her
• Morgan: items for her
• JDRF: (not pictured) we raise money during the year and get newsletters for our walks each year so anything pertaining to that goes here.

The finished project in it's final location....along with the tray and my planner

woo hoo to one completed project