I was reading about credit card free organizing blog and GREATLY enjoying it. I admires the photos and admit that getting my house show ready is making me desirous of an organized home. But I fear it at the same time.
I am not a person who keeps to a routine easily. I am not someone who plans menus or keeps a grocery list. I don't even budget. Yet surprisingly I am organized in one and only one area of my life. My finances.
Sounds strange and my DH would agree we both are hoarding clutterers who keep tons of crap in piles. We tend to toss mail around and our mail sorting and organizing consists of throwing all mail into a paper bag and looking at it once a week. We do that with the kids art to boot. But our finances? Its weird I am completely on top of and organized.
I can tell you probably pretty accurately bout balances and what we are spending. I can tell you how we pay our bills. All our bills are electronic or scanned in and saved to our hard drive. And monthly we back it up on n external hard drive. We also back it up to a CD in our fire safe and we backup our photos from our phones and cameras once a week.
Our bills are on a spreadsheet we creates in excel and you have to input date due, amount, and confirmation code. We have all statements in files organized for the last 10 years. We also scan in medical records and file all immunizations and stuff for us and the kids.
And granted the bulk of our investments are on auto debit before it hits the checking. And actually to make us stick to a hard and fast budget we deposit $5k a month into bank of america and the rest with capital one. So we spend $5k a month. On what? Well I know $2500 mortgage and a few of the other general bills and utilities on balanced billing. But beyond that I don't want to see why mint says I spend my money on. If I had to guess eating out and groceries.
But the rest of our crap? I wouldn't have guessed that my DH and I had $1200 worth of stuff worth selling a and still more to come.
But I am not wondering how can I organize the rest of my life? Perhaps I need to join that organized friend group. But it'd be weird wouldn't it to be live on Facebook away from being LAL?
Are you organized? Are you organized at home or just financials or both? How did you do it?
my fear of organizing
April 20th, 2015 at 08:33 pm
April 20th, 2015 at 08:44 pm 1429562642
I'm there and I can tell you that there is a HUGE benefit to it! I post fairly regularly: to motivate myself, to share what I am proud of that I've accomplished, and things that I need to improve on.
And just because we're in the same group, I can say we aren't FB "friends" so there is a certain amount of protection to anonymity. I'd say "Join us!"
You might be pleasantly surprised about the measure of clarity it can bring to you!
April 20th, 2015 at 08:59 pm 1429563553
As it is, even they let some things pile up (like filing or laundry) and then do a big push to get it sorted out. I think that's natural, though I'd love to get to a place where I just deal with each thing as it comes and don't let them stack up. I have gotten better about tearing up mail and putting it in recycling right away if it's useless.
I just joined the FB group and am looking forward to it helping me pull my weight in the organization department!
April 20th, 2015 at 09:34 pm 1429565659
We'll cheer you on here or there...or just read the blog and comment that way. I hope you read my post about how I'm not striving for perfection because it is not about that. I would guess with your ability to be organized with your finances you do have the ability to improve in other areas.
April 20th, 2015 at 10:37 pm 1429569438
An unexpected caller at the door is always invited into a home 'company ready,' with a host offering a snack. You need ingredients at hand for several meals with no expired stuff in either the fridge or the pantry. I like to think I can cover small illnesses/emergencies with 1st aid kits on each of our four levels, small OTC medi kits with valid products for each of the common problems .
If you think it's difficult or takes a lot of time, you're wrong. It does demand a routine, a willingness to write a list and assign yourself a daily task + a 15 or 20 minute Eliminate The Evidence [ETE]. Everyone in the household participates in a 'beat the clock,' tidy before bedtime. It's important because it keeps everyone aware of the need to put things away as they finish with them. Our family 'protocol' was ...don't put it down, put it away.
At the moment your plate is full getting ready to list your home for sale. Next will be those all important photos that show your home to potential buyers and then you'll be busy keeping your condo ready to show. Perhaps when you settle into your new accommodation, we can talk about home organization ideas. It's a major financial topic because so much of goals we set, decisions we make, actions we take, result in doing even better managing our money. Don't you find planned purchases usually deliver a more satisfying product than impulse purchases for example?
April 21st, 2015 at 12:53 am 1429577585
I like to think of myself as a work in progress. I mentioned this on the blog, but at some point I realized I wasn't keeping up with washing our sheets...it was really random. With small children accidents happen that force washing so throw in the adult sheets. But as they were older that didn't happen. I decided I could make sheet washing happen twice per month. I decided the best way to remember was to correlate it with payday and paying bills. Yes, I do forget, or take several days to get them all done, but I have seen a big improvement in this task. Then I started to work on other areas I wanted to improve. Some it is just a natural tendancy to want things tidy (which I say I try to do once a day).
April 21st, 2015 at 04:15 am 1429589744
His anxiety issues make him save everything, but then he forgets, or neglects it. Tonight when I was clearing the DR table of all the stuff he'd stacked there in my absence, I found expired coupons for free things, expired rebates, and small rebate checks uncashed. I'm good at my things, but his can be overwhelming. And for me, it's nothing to do with virtue, I just can't think clearly surrounded by a big mess.
April 21st, 2015 at 01:09 pm 1429621788
April 21st, 2015 at 06:38 pm 1429641526
April 21st, 2015 at 09:00 pm 1429650054
I do laundry but then I leave it in the basket rather than put it away and that's after doing a load a day. They just get piled. Uggh. I am exhausted.