Taming the chaos 6, 7 and 8

I have finished chapters 6-8 in Organize Now!, which coincides well with the blog-iverse trend of organizing our paperwork and/or offices this month.   Chapter 6 was regarding Finances (see my previous post), 7 is Bill Paying Systems (also taken care of along with 6), and 8 is Receipts & Taxes.  We are fortunate in that our taxes are pretty straight forward.  We have taken care to track and keep the paperwork the last few years for our free lance work, but neither one of us has made any significant money to be taxed or to exceed our standard deductions.  Even last year won’t be too bad with my and Robin’s hospital stay since we spent less than the minimum needed.  So, from reviewing last years taxes, I think this year we’ll only need three folders:

1. Expenses – for items that might be deductible (medical bills, child care) and insurance explanation of benefits
2. Income – to verify against our W2s, etc).
3. To Pay – for those bills that are still mailed to us (everything else is automated).

I keep these in a Longaberger Sort and Store desktop basket (Which is being retired soon.) along with my notepad for letter drafts (I write a rough draft of all my letters and notes because my spelling and handwriting are horrible!!); note cards, stamps, and (coming soon!) Project Life cards.

Next up in the Organize Now! book are:

Week 9: Organize Your Files – I am working on it! I have a lot of weird miscellaneous stuff to go through and scan or just finally DO, but I have the bulk of it taken care of.

Week 10: Organize Your Magazines and Newspapers – We don’t get newspapers at all and we get three magazines total and they are all organized already (my two magazines are on my scrapbooking shelf and the husband passes his off to his father).

Week 11: Organize Your Email and Social Media – This is also done already.  I keep these things in check pretty constantly.

Week 12: Organize Your Mail – Also done! We don’t get much mail and I am very good at opening, sorting and dealing with the mail right away.

SO, after taking care of my files, I’ll be moving on to the section “Organize Your Things” where I’ll be working on organizing Robin’s toys, then my crafts and photographs.  There are other “Things”, but these three things alone are going to take me a LOOOONNNGG time.  Heck, the scrapbooking shelf has already been a big project for some time now…  But, I’m excited to be able to mark it off!!