Money Saving Mom®

Guest post by Kathy of Cornerstone Confessions.

This week I looked at my file cabinet and decided it was time for a redo.  A few years ago I had set out to organize our papers, yet afterwards, I was still the only one who could find things. My hubby would come to me and say, “Where is that paper about…” and inevitably I’d have to stop what I was doing to go find it.

So this week I decided it was time for an overhaul.  While I really didn’t change file names much this go round, I simply decided to add color.

The result: my hubby quickly glanced at the made-over files and very quickly knew where to find everything.

Success!

Now let me explain. First of all, I did not find putting those paper inserts into the tabs very appealing.  So instead, I used a Word template to create and print color coded return address labels which I then stuck over the plastic tabs.  This was so much easier!

Secondly, we have two drawers:  one drawer is a reference drawer and one drawer is a working drawer.

In our reference drawer we have files for our manuals and product information as well as other resources such as articles we cut out of magazines that we may want to refer to again.

In our reference drawer, each tab is color coded according to type:  pink is for my blog ideas, green for anything having to do with home life, yellow for children topics, red for hobby topics, orange for travel, and so on.  We then have all our product manuals and receipts grouped and filed alphabetically using a blue label.

In our working drawer, we have all that other stuff.  At the front of the working drawer is our go-to files.  These files are labeled in pink and include things such as address labels, bills, and stamps.  For our receipts and ink to recycle, we also have a Ziploc bag inside the file folder.  When it comes time to sort through receipts at the end of the month, we just pull out the bag.  If it’s time to take our ink to recycle at Staples, we just pull out the bag and we’re ready to go.

Behind our go-to files are our auto, finance, home and insurance files, all now color coded of course. Even our personal records are then color coded by name.  Since each of my children are already color coded in other areas of their life I just carried their colors over to their files.  Now anytime Goose needs to find his high school diploma or latest medical records he knows right where to look — the red labels.

Ahhh…life is getting so much better!  Not only that, my file cabinet now looks joyful…if you can say that about a file cabinet.  Now, the next question is whether or not my hubby could find the cleaning supplies if I organized them by color.  Hmm….

Kathy Gossen is a servant of Christ, wife, mom, musician, and author of Cornerstone Confessions. She enjoys spending time with her husband Goose, and their 2 precious little girls as well as reading, blogging, playing the piano, and pursuing life as a developing domestic diva drawing on the divine.