Paper

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I don’t know about you, but we get all kinds of extra envelopes in the mail via credit card offers, donation requests, or for bills that we pay online. I’ve done everything I can to “opt-out”, unsubscribe, and sign up for paperless statements… but the envelopes still come!

And since I don’t like to waste paper, I’ve started using those extra envelopes to make grocery lists… and then I put the coupons for that shopping trip right inside the envelope.

It’s a great solution to keep everything organized by store… and it’s totally free!

Here are a few other uses for extra envelopes:

• making your daily to-do lists
• kids hot lunch orders/money
• allowances for each family member
• cash budget system
• storing extra receipts {one for each family member, category, or event}
• organizing restaurant coupons or menus {dine-in, fast food, pizza, delivery, etc}
• storing and organizing stamps and return address labels
• organizing small craft supplies {stickers, paper scraps, decals, etc}

What do you use those extra envelopes for?

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Every year around this time, I start getting lots and lots of emails from people who are overwhelmed and don’t know how to get all their tax documents organized for the upcoming tax season.

And while I know it can seem like an extremely time-consuming task, I use a really SIMPLE system that allows me to have all my tax documents ready to go within minutes… seriously!

Here’s what I do…

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1. Create.

At the beginning of each new year, I create a manila file for that year’s taxes {I just created my “2012 taxes” folder a couple weeks ago}

2. File.

Over the course of the next 12 months, I immediately file EVERY document I will need for tax purposes into that manila folder.

3. Evaluate.

When it’s time to have our taxes done, I quickly look through our folder to make sure I have all the documents I need, and then bring it to our accountant.

I’ve been using this ultra-simple method to organize our personal and business tax documents for the last several years; and so far, I haven’t spent more than a few minutes getting all our tax documents organized for our accountant.

And I’ve never needed to go back and find something that I forgot or misplaced.

It might be too late to implement this system for your 2011 taxes, but it’s the perfect time to create a folder for your 2012 taxes. I guarantee you’ll thank yourself next year when it only takes 5 minutes to get things organized!

How do you organize your tax documents?

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{don’t worry, we’re not getting rid of Nora!}

As you can probably imagine, January and February are busy months for anyone involved in the “organizing industry”. Just think about how many people made a New Year’s resolution or goal to “get more organized” this year!

And even though I’m normally quite organized, I find myself with an even stronger desire to declutter at the beginning of a new year. Maybe it’s because I like to declutter while I take down my holiday decorations, maybe it’s because I need to compensate for all the additional stuff we brought IN to our home at Christmas, or maybe it’s simply because I’m inside all the time during these cold winter months and can’t stand to live in clutter.

Whatever the case, I too have the urge to purge!

If you’ve had this same urge lately, I have a really SIMPLE tip that always seems to help me get rid of even more stuff in and around our house.

My tip = use a clothes basket.

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Lately, I’ve put a couple different clothes baskets in convenient places around our house and anytime I come across something we don’t need, use, want, or love, I simply toss it in the clothes basket. When the baskets get full, or when I know I’ll be near a donation center, I simply put the baskets in my car and drop off our unneeded items.

Why do I like using clothes baskets?

• They are really easy to carry
• They are super portable so I can move them to different rooms in our house — or right into the car
• They are sturdy enough to hold all kinds of things
• They are inexpensive
• They fill up quickly so I feel like I’m making lots of decluttering progress

And since I’m pretty sure almost every single person reading this has at least one clothes basket lying around… I would like to challenge you to spend 20 minutes walking from room to room and see how full you can get your basket!

Oh, and here’s another really good use for clothes baskets…

How many clothes baskets could you fill over the next year?

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4 comments →

UPDATE: This giveaway is now closed.

A few weeks ago, I talked about how I organize my purse clutter — and featured a bunch of really cool organizing tools from Invite L that I just KNEW you would love…

Well, today {as promised} I’m going to be giving away those same organizing products — just in time for the holidays!!! yay!

And just because I want to give you one more opportunity to drool over these gorgeous products, here are a few pictures of the items that will be included in today’s giveaway!

Felt Bag-in-Bag:

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I’ve been using the green Felt Bag-in-Bag for the past month now, both inside other larger bags and all on its own. And no mater where I bring it, I always get loads of compliments from friends, family, and complete strangers.

It’s just such an attractive bag… that also happens to be super functional!

Dual Bag-in-Bag:

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Seriously — do you know how much stuff the Dual Bag-in-Bag can store and organize!! And it’s SO small!

It also fits perfectly in our diaper bag with plenty of extra room for baby things!

The Agenda: my new favorite planner!

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Invite L. has a huge selection of planners and agendas that are totally customizable!

I’m currently using their Agenda, which allows me to start on any day of the year and organize each day, week, month, and year!  I love that there is PLENTY of room to write out the activities for every single day and extra room for notes, or all my to-dos at the bottom.

I’ve used many planners, and so far, this one is my favorite! 

Colorful Masking Tape:

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I’m seriously SOOOO excited to use some of this tape for wrapping holiday gifts!

The Giveaway:

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Today, one lucky Simple Organized Living reader will win an Invite L. Prize Pack that includes:

1. One Bag-in-Bag {your choice}
2. One Agenda Planner
3. One Set of 3 Decorative Masking Tapes

A second reader will win:

• One Bag-in-Bag {your choice}

Finally, TEN readers will win:

• $5 gift card to use on any of the Invite L. organizing products!

How to Enter:

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1. Leave a comment. What would YOU use the Bag-in-Bag for?

2. Like Simple Organized Living on Facebook, and then leave a separate comment letting me know you did {or that you do already}.

If you are reading this in your email or feed reader, please visit the actual blog post to enter. Email entries, Facebook comments, and Twitter messages will NOT be counted.

Prizes:

(1) Invite L. prize pack as described above.

(1) Invite L. Bag-in-Bag

(10) Invite L. $5 gift cards

This giveaway ends at 10:00 pm on Monday, 11/14/2011 and is open to all U.S. residents 18 years or older. I will use And the Winner Is to select the winning comments at random. Winners will be notified by email and noted at the top of this post. Winners must respond within 48 hours of notification to claim their prize or I will choose a new winner. Please see my full disclosure policy and contact me with any questions you have. Good luck!

299 comments →

For the first 5 years of our marriage {and for most of our lives} Dave and I have been blessed with extremealy good health. We also have relatively good insurance that covers the cost of our yearly physical and our semiannual dental exams. So outside of a few insurance documents, we’ve hardly had any medical paperwork for our entire married life!

However, these last few months I’ve been going to the doctor every month {and now every two weeks} for regular pre-natal check-ups and we’re getting LOTS of medical paperwork for me and for our future baby.

We also have additional insurance and medical papers to keep track of for our two international students, and some of our insurance companies recently changed…which means MORE paperwork!

So I decided that our system for organizing medical and insurance paperwork needed an update.

My OLD System for Medical Paperwork

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Previously, I only had one file folder labeled “Medical” {see it right there in the middle of the photo above} and I put all of our insurance and medical information in that one folder. It worked perfectly fine for us… until now.

As I mentioned before, we are receiving a lot more medical and insurance paperwork, and until our baby is born, we really do need to keep it all. And as you’ll read below — it’s a really good thing I had our records so organized and easily accessible!

Our NEW System for Medical Paperwork

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With the influx of additional paperwork {and lots more to come once the baby arrives!} I set up a new system with a few more folders and a little more organization.

Here’s what I did:

I created one MAIN hanging file labeled “Insurance” with 4 manila folders inside:

1. Dental Insurance
2. Medical Insurance
3. Life Insurance
4. Sarah and Nancy’s Insurance {our international students}

I think the category names are pretty self-explanatory, but just in case — we will be keeping all our insurance information in separate folders for easier access {and becuase some of our insurance information recently changed so it’s just easier this way.

I also created a new file for our international student’s information {which we will hopefully never have to use!}

Then, I created another MAIN hanging file labeled “Medical” with 4 more manila folders inside:

1. Andrea’s Records
2. Baby Dekker’s Info
3. Dave’s Records
4. Sarah and Nancy’s Records

Again, I think the category names are self-explanatory, but I basically put ALL the medical records, bills, receipts, payment information, etc. for each person in the appropriate file. I keep dental and medical records together, even though they are through different insurance companies because that seems to work the best for us — and we don’t have THAT many records to keep track of.

Since “Insurance” and “Medical” fall very close to eachother in the alphabet {and we apparently don’t have any “J”, “K”, or “L” folders}, they end up right next to eachother in our filing cabinet which makes things even more convenient.

As you can see, my system is nothing elaborate – just simple folders, labels, and permanent markers… but it works for us!

How My Organized System Paid Off — Big Time!

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Along with all the influx of medical paperwork, I was also receiving several bills for items our insurance wasn’t covering. However, our insurance policy states that anything consider “pre-natal” should be covered 100%.

So when I started getting the bills, I immediately called the doctors office and the insurance company to figure out what was going on.  Of course, in order to get anything resolved, I needed to fax over ALL my insurance information and every single piece of medical paperwork I’ve recieved over the past few months.

Since my system was so organized, it only took me about 15 minutes to round up everything they needed {in cronological order!} and fax it out. And within a week, I got a call from one of the nurses saying that all the payments would be reversed and if I had any more issues to contact her directly.

So I basically saved several hundreds of dollars in medical bill payments simply because I had all my paperwork, information, and records neat and organized — which is definitely worth it to me!

** Also, depending on how much you spend on medical bills during the course of a year, you may be able to get a nice tax deduction too — just one MORE reason to keep these important papers organized!!

You can read more about how I organize the rest of our paperwork here and here {there are pictures!} but I’d love to know…

How do you organized your paperwork? Do you have a special system for medical information?

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8 comments →

source: alexkerhead

I hate wasting time!

So I’m always on the lookout for quick organizing projects to tackle when I have a few extra minutes here and there. I’ve even started timing some of my daily tasks, and found that I could accomplish many of them in 10 minutes or less!

After thinking about these 10-minute tasks, I realized that by completing one every day for a year, I would tally up over 60 hours of organizing — pretty impressive!

So what can YOU accomplish in just 10 minutes a day?

Lots of stuff!

Head on over to the AboutOne Blog to read 22 simple ways you can get more organized in 10 minutes or less!

And I know you have at least 10 minutes!

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UPDATE: This giveaway is now closed.

Congrats to Stacey: stellaosborn@… You should receive an email from AboutOne shortly!

It’s no secret that I LOVE organized paperwork!

I just think it’s so important to have our bills, tax document, health records, financial information, and other important paperwork, organized in a way that we can quickly and easily find it whenever we need to.

I’ve seen SO much stress associated with disorganized paperwork — believe me, it’s not worth it. And with a baby on the way, it’s going to be even more important to keep all our important information organized and easy to find.

Thankfully, there are resources like AboutOne.com that offer simple, practical, and convenient online storage for all your most important paper documents and household information.

What is AboutOne?

AboutOne is a program designed by moms, for moms, to help organize all your important paperwork and information. AboutOne offers convenient online storage for all your photos, memorabilia, medical records, daily events, and more.

See why these busy moms and dads love AboutOne!

How will AboutOne benefit you?

Not only will AboutOne help you to clear the paper clutter from your home, it will also proved you with a safe, secure place to store your important information AND access it wherever you have Internet — even from your phone!

My favorite AboutOne features:

I love printables! I have all kinds of free printable documents on my blog, so I immediately fell in love with the great list of printables I can create with my AboutOne membership.

The image above is a screen-shot of my AboutOne dashboard and you can see I am able to create Family Newsletters, Babysitter Information Charts, Health History Reports, Caregiver Reports, Education History, and much more!

All of those documents will come in handy once baby Dekker arrives. And the best part is that once I input all our information into our AboutOne profile, it automatically creates these printables with just the click of the mouse!

AboutOne also offers the ability to send cards, invites, announcements, etc. right from your computer for the same price as a normal card — which could really come in handy for baby announcements.

Are you excited to organize your paperwork yet? If not, maybe a free AboutOne membership and an American Express gift card will do the trick!

AboutOne has generously offered a full-year membership AND a $50 American Express gift card to one lucky Simple Organized Living reader!

Want to win?

All you have to do is sign up for a free 17-day trial membership and then leave a comment below telling me that you did.

For an extra entry, you can take a digital picture of your paper clutter and email it to inbox@aboutone.com — then make sure you let me know you did via the comment section below!

This is a weekend giveaway, so the contest is only open until Tuesday, August 2, 2011, at 10:00 pm EST. One winner will be selected at random and announced on Wednesday,  August 3. Please read my full disclosure policy and contact me with any questions you might have. I received a free one-year subscription to AboutOne, however all opinions are my own.

Want to purchase an AboutOne membership for 25% off?

Simply sign up for a one-year membership and enter the promo code: SIMPLYORG714 when you check out and you will receive 25% off! This offer expires on August 31, 2011.

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