Another Mission Organization Complete!

Another project I finished up this week was my Home Organizer. I constantly had papers and notebooks laying everywhere in our house. I had one in the office, stacks of magazines in the office, another notebook by the junk drawer in the kitchen, several baggies full of coupons, a little recipe box where I keep my recipes I like to make again and again (like I said before though, there is very few that we make more than once). I decided it all needed to be organized once and for all and in a way it would be easy to add to, easy to clean out, and easy to access/take with me. The result, a home organization binder and a seperate coupon binder which I'm working on now.


I first started by going through all the old magazines I had. Maybe of them were saved just because of one or two pages. So I went ahead and cut out the information or pictures I was savings, and recycling the rest. Then I gathered my go to recipes, sorted through my email and notebooks and consolidated all those little "tips" I had wrote down. Then I just started organizing them all. One tab is go to recipes, another tab is laundry/home "tips" such as how to get certain stains out of clothes which was clipped from a RealSimple magazine, simple entertaining ideas like my go to appitizer recipes and the layout of where the fork, spoon, and knife should go during a dinner party, then some house decor "inspiration" pics as well as some how-to articles on home improvement.


Todd input was to add a list of when things around the house needed to be done, such as the furnace filter gets changed the first Saturday every month and windows get cleaned the first weekend in April each year. He also added a few pages of business cards of people we use for things around the house, the heating and air guy, the electrician, etc. Here is a picture of the inside. Nothing speacial, but it works perfeclty for keeping us organized and having everything in one location.


I'm currently working on a coupon binder. Before, I kept seperate ziplock baggies for each coupon category - food coupons, restaurant coupons, baby coupons, and everything else like coupons for oil changes or Bed, Bath and Beyond. This worked alright for keeping everything organized, but it would be easier to have it all in one place and to keep the binder in my car. I'm going to start putting it in my reusable grocery bags while I go grocery shopping since I'm constantly finding sales that weren't in the flyer and think, shoot, I had a coupon for that. Now, when I have the binder on me, I'll hav the coupon. Or, when we're out and about, we often decide to go ahead and eat out, but our coupons are always at home. Lastly, I'v added a little zipper pencil case and some looseleaf paper. The pencil case is for loose coupons or when I don't have time to "file" them. The looseleaf paper is to start tracking priced. When I know what the rock bottom price is, I'll know this is the best time to stock up.


Well, I think that's about it for now. Back to packing.....we're off for Lake Michigan/Holland, MI tomorrow. We tried to forgo a vacation this year, but we just couldn't do it. So a long weekend in Michigan is better than nothing, right?