Organizing Your File Folders/Mail: Spring Cleaning Week

Today concludes my spring cleaning series. I want to tell you about organizing file folders and mail/kids' school paperwork. These are areas that I definitely needed to get organized!

Let's start with file folders. I know it is important to keep records, and as I age, I realize more and more how we have to go back to reference old records--mostly W2s and tax information, 401K history, refinance paperwork, and mortgage and bank statements. I file more than just those items though--utility bills, cell phone statements, pay stubs, College Invest statements, credit card bills, and more. I'm up in the air as to whether I need to file these but while I'm filing the important paperwork, I figured I might as well keep these papers too "just in case."

Are you like me in that you despise filing? It doesn't take long if I keep up with it monthly but I usually only do it quarterly. This is because our filing drawers are in our basement. I usually pay a bill, save the paperwork and stack it at the top of my stairs to take in a huge pile to the file folder area. Our file folders were finally busting open from 3 years of filing. I invested in a file box at Staples ($10 for 4 boxes) and dumped our old folders into it like so. I know this isn't breaking news, most people eventually do this but I finally got around to doing it!

I then used my handy label maker (I've used this tool now for three spring cleaning projects this week!) to create new file folder labels. I then filed all our paperwork going back to January 2013 in new file folders. Ahhhh....everything looks so much cleaner and I don't mind filing though I'm sure I'll still only do it quarterly. The box with the old folders goes into our storage area and I don't have to look at those records again unless I absolutely have to.

Now, onto kids' school paperwork....My old solution for handling paperwork that comes from the school that I have to sign or deal with was to place it on a large plate in our kitchen. That solution was working fine but when I was at Staples looking for file boxes, I discovered the Martha Stewart area!

I started looking through her collection and realized I could solve some of our school paperwork and homework dilemmas with one solution. My kids have homework every day. They sit at our breakfast bar and start their homework while I make dinner. MiniB is in kindergarten and usually needs glue, tape, crayons, or scissors to complete his homework. He'll usually go get these items and then we'll put them away once he's done. Not anymore. We bought this beauty:

With this handy set up, I can store homework stuff (pencils, scissors, erasures, glue, tape, calculator, note pad). I also sometimes have to write notes to their teachers so it's easy to have lined sticky notes. They also come in handy to leave my family notes if needed. This is a good area to leave the kids some emergency numbers if they ever need them. I love this Martha Stewart storage station! We are no longer dragging stuff out of their rooms or my desk only to have to put them back and drag them out the next day again.

Ok, so now onto mail organization. I have always used the below to store my upcoming bills. It is simple and works great. No issues there.

Where I struggle is where to put coupons and magazines (because it often takes me a month or so to get to a magazine). We get monthly coupons for various restaurants, Jo-Anns, Bed Bath & Beyond, Clarks, the oil-changing place, the grocery store, and so much more. I've always just shoved them into a desk drawer. The problem with that is my desk is nowhere near our garage or front door. Often when I'm going on an errand, I forget about the coupons I have and if I do, I have to sort through a bunch of outdated ones to find the one I'm looking for. I found this shelf ledge turned upside down is a good solution. I can now see my coupons and magazines and keep them updated. I know what I have and it is in a place that I can look quickly before I get into the car to go. And I can grab a magazine if I know I'm going to be sitting around waiting for one of my kids at piano or soccer. Easy peasy!

Thanks for visiting me this week as I've spring cleaned. I'm tired. Time to go enjoy ourselves for spring break!

Organizing Board Games: Spring Cleaning Week

Spring cleaning week continues here. Today's topic is organizing board games. Every month we have Family Game Night in our living room. We store our games in a cabinet in our living room. Here is a before picture:

It isn't that bad but there are times where the kids want to take games to their rooms or to play in the basement with friends. Rather than worry that they don't lose pieces along the way, I wanted to put their games in a bin so they can carry it all together and try to keep pieces from getting lost. The adult games have dice, note pads, pencils, dictionary, and poker chips that I wanted to keep together. So I separated the games in different bins. This cabinet is also where I store my candles.

The kids games are now all housed together. This is also handy for trips to grandparent's house to be able to just load the bin in the car rather than a game that can potentially lose parts in the car.

The adult games are also housed together. This is also a good solution for keeping little hands from using the entire Pictionary pad to draw happy faces or taking the dice and not returning them. Or taking the clay from the Cranium game for their own purposes. I guess technically they can still do all those things but you make it a little harder by separating the games.

Do you have a system for storing your games? The next eyesore is our video game storage area but that will have to come in the future. Tomorrow's topic is tackling your filing cabinet organization.

Lego Storage Part II: Organize Your Lego Manuals: Spring Cleaning Week

In yesterday's post, I discussed organizing my son's Legos for my spring cleaning series. Today I want to show you how I organize my son's Lego manuals so that we can rebuilt any of his various kits anytime by following the original directions.

First, I purchased a colored binder and clear binder pocket pages. Then I simply put each binder into a pocket. It was easy and allows him to look through each page very clearly. And because they're stored in the pocket, he will hopefully not ruin the pages since they will just go right back in the binder once he's used them.

I created the logo for the front of the binder and simply printed it and inserted it into the clear flap. You can download a PDF of the page I created PDF here if you want to create your own binder to store manuals.

Lego Storage and Organization: Spring Cleaning Week

I am continuing my Spring Cleaning series week by tackling Lego storage. If your kiddos love Legos, you know my pain (literally--have you ever stepped on one of them?). It got out of control quickly after a Lego-themed birthday party. We had everything in a few plastic bins but I realized it wasn't conducive to building, and, if I felt overwhelmed when opening the bin, surely my 5-year old did too.

So, to Pinterest I went! I found many options that moms use to organize Legos. There is grouping legos by color, which seemed to be the most popular option. Though that is an awesome way to quickly put Legos away in a pinch, I thought it was just a more organized version of the solution I already had in place and didn't make building any easier.

I sat down with a pile of manuals from all the various Lego kits MiniB had received. Most had been put together and torn down into fragments. I tried to put the below one together and found it impossible in the current state of our Lego organization.

So, I came to the conclusion that the best option is to group Legos by their shape and function. That is, all squares together, all flat pieces together, all Lego people bodies together, etc. Luckily, Target had the following on sale!

I then dumped everything out on MiniB's floor to begin sorting. Yikes!

It took me a good two hours to sort everything into piles.

Now to sort them into their storage cases. First, all the Lego bodies, heads, hats and weapons. I used my label maker (one of my favorite things, read here).

There were plenty of flat pieces to store too.

Then, I took this large Lego Storage Head that we got for Christmas and put all of the "regular" lego pieces--squares, medium bricks, and large bricks.

Then, I put all the "irregular" pieces into the Lego storage drawers I got at Target. We put my son's initials on the outside of one of the drawers for fun.

They came with handy plastic separators. I considered irregular pieces those that are unusual shaped, tires, props or tools, doors, windows, and anything unique.

I didn't want to tear down the partial projects so I reserved an entire drawer for projects that were partially put together.

Here is our completed storage set up! MiniB is so excited and we sat down and attempted build one of the projects from the manual from scratch. It was so easy and fun! Which leads me to tomorrow's topic, storing and organizing all of the Lego manuals so you can rebuild projects again and again.

Tackling the Linen Closet-Spring Cleaning Week Begins!

As promised, I'm going to share my spring cleaning problem spots here at Chez Silly Happy Sweet.

Last week I shared with you the before photo of our hallway linen closet. We don't really store towels in this closet, mainly sheets, comforters, humidifier, heating pad, and some of my knitting (yarn) stash. Here again is the before:

Are you like me in that when it comes to folding fitted sheets you just roll them up in a semi-folded shape and call it a day? I know there is a better way but I have never had the desire to learn. To spiffy up this closet I decided I would watch Martha Stewart's video on how to fold fitted sheets. Here's a before of our sheets:

And our sheets after I watched the video and fixed them. Better, yes?

I fixed up the knitting area too by buying some baskets for my stash. I store some knitting in this closet because I have several projects going at a time and I like to have it close when I watch tv or want to work on it. I have an entire armoire in our basement guest room where I store all of the rest of my yarn. That's normal, right?

Sock yarn (so yummy):

I moved the heavy comforters to our basement guest room closet where there are larger shelves for storage. This looks much better, do you agree?

Do you feel better when you clean up the nooks and crannies of your home? I'm not sure I'll keep folding the fitted sheets perfectly but I will try for awhile. Tomorrow I tackle Part 1 of the dredful lego storage problem we have around here.