How to organize user manuals and receipts (Day 5 of 31 days of Pinterest: Pinned to DONE!

This post is part of a series – “31 days of Pinterest: Pinned to Done”  You can read all the posts in this series here.  And to make sure you don’t miss anything you can sign up to have every post sent to your email, follow me on facebook, or subscribe in your reader.

Today I am doing a project from my “Organize Everything” board.  Yep, I definitely need to be spending more time doing and not just pinning things on that board – don’t we all?

Here is the pin from Desiring Virtue – Organize your user/owner’s manuals in a 3 ring binder.

Because for some reason THIS wasn’t really working for me.

And neither was THIS!  Let me explain about this basket and this story goes from bad to worse, ok?  This is my “to file” basket.  Yep, I am not showing you how big is it.  At some point over the last 2 years I went from filing bills, receipts, and general paper every couple months to ONCE a year (at tax time.)  I don’t know how it happened but it just did.  I don’t really enjoy filing, we don’t have a functional office, and you know what  – the once a year filing/purging/organizing seems to be working ok for the moment.  UNTIL I need to find something that should be filed – let’s not talk about those times, ok?

Want to know why that Ryobi weed-eater manual is on the top?  Well, you may remember that my husband got me a new battery/electric weedeater back in the spring.  (Yes, I do all the yard work – I enjoy it, he doesn’t; I have the time, he doesn’t – it just works.  Maybe I should delegate the filing to him??)  So on Saturday, I was swamped with things to do, one which was to mow the grass, do a ton of weed-eating, do some fall cleanup in the flower gardens, along with cleaning the house and prepare a meal for company the next day, oh, and doing some prep for this series that started on Monday.  And lo and behold the weed-eater ran out of string and I couldn’t it get it to load right.  So I traipsed my dirty self in to the house, dumped out this basket, and began searching for the user manual.  All the while silently (ok, maybe out loud too) berating myself for not being organized, for this mess, for not being able to find the user manual when I needed it.  I finally found it, stuffed the papers back in the basket, figured out what I was doing wrong with the weed eater, and went on with my day determined to do something about my disorganization.

Which brings me to this project.  I even had the supplies on hand!  You will need a notebook (or a few, depending on how many user manuals you have), and some sheet protector sheets.  I ended up not using the file dividers.

I started out grabbing manuals and all the paper that goes with them and putting them into sheet protectors until I sort of saw a pattern and figured out how I would divide them up into notebooks.  I had receipts for the items, I put those in the same pocket.

I started out doing an “Electronics” book, a “Kitchen appliance” book, and a “Household” notebook.

By the time I got done though, the “Household” notebook was way too full and I realized we had quite a few “Tools and Outdoors” manuals to deserve their own notebook.

I was able to throw away these manuals for things we don’t even own any more! 

And this??  We don’t have kids, have never owned a crib, and I have no idea where this came from?  All I can figure is someone out there got a manual for a blender in their crib box and we got a crib manual in our blender box??  Hilarious.

I typed up a quick description sheet in MS Word and slipped it into the clear pocket on the front.

And printed up another sheet and cut it into strips to slip into the pocket on the side.  So now I can put these on a shelf, see the description right on the spine, and just pull out the right one when I need it.

And when I do my “once a year filing” come January/February (ahem!), I am sure I will find more manuals and receipts to add to these notebooks.

But for now, I am LOVING this! 

How about you?  How do you organize your user’s manuals, receipts for those items, and things like that?   And are you a “filer”” or a “piler”?

I am joining Nester from Nesting Place in writing a 31 days series in October.  You can see all the other hundreds of people writing a 31 days series here.

And I am excited to have 3 blogging friends join me in the insanity! Check out their series by clicking on the buttons below.

      

And my sister-in-law is joining along too!   Writing about their transition as they move across the country with four children. 

Christina