Ah, January. How I love thee. Seriously. When else do you get to take down a boatload of decorations, get things clean and tidy, and resolve to get more organized? For a neat freak like me, it boils down to a whole month full o' fun. I've been tackling projects around the house bit by bit, and I've got a LIST of things I want to do this year. I think I'll have to tackle a room a month. For instance, we moved into this house a year and a half ago, and most of the walls are white. It's a huge, airy house, and the white walls work, but I think I'm ready to add some color. So besides painting and throwing some color around, I also want to tackle the laundry room, closets, storage areas, and (gulp) p...p...pa....paperwork. Actually, our paperwork is fairly organized. It's more the "if-I-died-tomorrow-would-anyone-know-where-the-important-stuff-is" concern. I am the CFO of our family. Besides being very well-versed in all things adoption related, I am the bill payer, budgeter, receipt keeper, investment organizer, etc. I have all the account numbers, passwords, and bill pay power. So if something happened to me, then my beneficiaries would be up the proverbial creek. I aim to get that taken care of. So for this month (besides quietly taking part in 30 days of nothing) I want to get our affairs in order.
1. Create a master list of what to do should I die. (So uplifting, I know, but absolutely necessary.) Leave David with instructions of how to access all accounts, corresponding passwords, bill pay instructions, monthly to-do instructions, investment/college fund instructions, and on and on. Even lame things like my library pin number. If David is planning a funeral, the last thing he needs to worry about is if my library books are overdue. (Which I guess they would be if I were dead.)
2. Get a system together for my kids' school papers. Please excuse me for a moment while I stuff a sock in my mouth and scream. Okay, I'm back. This project stinks. Big time. I don't save gobs and gobs of art projects and spelling tests, but I save enough from each year to remember that year. Throw in school pictures and report cards, plus some track and field day ribbons, and you've got yourself a problem. So this month I want to change all that.
3. Organize our music. Three kids, five instruments, and a lot of sheet music = a big headache for mama. I need to figure out a way to corral all that and make it easy for the kids to keep tabs on it, and more importantly, put it all away when they're done.
So there you have it. And seeing that we're 10 days into January, I need to get crackin'.
5 comments:
What if you created a filing cabinet for each kiddo w/ school work etc. for each year? Something like this:
http://www.officemax.com/office-furniture/storage/portable-file-storage/product-prod2550232?cm_mmc=GBase-_-Office%20Furniture-_-Storage-_-Portable%20File%20Storage&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=21893952
Yup. I just copied and pasted that longass URL in to a comment. I did. ;)
As far as your morbid decision to organize....God love ya, but I doubt that if David were planning a funeral he'd care much about your overdue books.
You crack me up.
And I'm right there with you.
I LOVE to organize- just find it hard this particular January.
HOWEVER (!) I did clean out 2 cabinets in the kitchen yesterday and our filing cabinet. I was pretty darn proud of myself, if I don't say so myself. :)
I love January for the same reasons! Maybe save a few rooms for painting for July. :) I'm a seasoned pro at painting white walls!
Good for you. My family would be in the same boat should I, well, drown in a different boat. Yet, I cannot bring myself to tackle this ginormous project. Perhaps you will inspire me.
#2 is *the hardest* thing for me to manage. My problem is that I do keep every single thing my children have ever created. The smaller stuff is kept in binders with clear plastic sleeves dated by year. The bigger stuff is kept in flat storage boxes (think underbed boxes) in the basement. Eventually I'll probably go through it all and narrow it down so that we just have the most memorable pieces, but I *love* seeing the progression of their work, and they love flipping through their own binders. Even so, I almost always have a backlog of "artwork" to organize. drives me nuts!
On my list too. Could use a motivational talk to spur activity though. I am dreading it.
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