Thursday, July 27, 2017

KonMari: Paper Week

I’m finished with our household papers.  I was so easy to do. I’m so happy that I spend the time over the last couple years whittling them down and organizing them. I’m finding greater productivity comes after you’ve discarded and organized. In productivity you have time to refine systems and make plans which makes life easier.

















In the last round I got new folders for our household files, color coded everything, and used a label maker to label them. It took an 8 hour day to discard, file, and label everything.  It has worked out very well with the color coded files and my husband is able to find things much better.  Having everything labeled with a label maker instead of by hand has made things clearer. I was able to sort through our papers quickly this time and discard what was unneeded within an hour. 

 















I did a quick sort though our Legacy/Archived Files. I discarded our medical/insurance paperwork for 2016. We had planned to discard them in March but a few things hadn’t cleared up so it seems July is a good time to do that. All our medical bills for 2016 are paid along with our HSA finalized. We haven’t added much since January to our Legacy/Archived Files besides updated medical insurance and retirement benefits paperwork. We did buy a truck in March and added a file folder into our vehicle hanging folder for that loan. We gave our 25 yrs. daughter one of our cars so that file was passed over to her in March.

















 We keep our Budget Notebook in the Legacy/Archived Files drawer too. We do need to sit down together in the next week to update and discuss what our goals are for the next 6 months. We’d like to go back to doing our Thursday meetings that we had started 2 yrs. ago but have fallen by the wayside over the last year. We both found them helpful. We do talk about it a bit as we're paying bills and at other times but we'd both like more focused time. My husband was saying a couple weeks ago that he’d like us to start setting 5 yrs. goals. Paper week would be a good time to discuss these things.
In our Financial/Temporary files drawer I sorted though and organized our bill box which I do every 2 weeks before paying the bills. It happened that this is a payday/bill pay week so that worked out well. My husband paid the bills after returning home from work. Yippy, he made the final payment on-line to our car loan. He made a note to call the loan company about receiving our clear title and final papers. 

 












In our Financial/Temporary files drawer is where we keep our activity and travel plans too. We updated our camper renovation lists. Although we finished with everything needed before the trip there are a couple things we’d still like to do to our camper. We haven’t done as much hiking as we’d wanted due to working on our camper and our trip. We hope in August to plan a hike most Saturdays until the weather turns too cool toward the end of October. We’d like to get back to our nightly 3-4 mile walks too. We need to talk about this stuff too.

















My husband and I went on a 3 week trip to celebrate our 25th Anniversary June 19th –July 9th. I had made a Trip Notebook with our plans and prepaid reservations. This was the first trip that I had created a more detailed notebook but it was worth it. In the past I would have printed activity idea and attraction information and put it in a paper folder. This time I planned each day out in our notebook with section dividers and prepaid for most of our attractions and a few meal reservations. My husband and I enjoyed looking through it each day to decide what was on the agenda for the next day. We allowed for flexibility by not paying for everything so we could decide to not go to that activity if we wanted, we did 1 big thing per day along with a few smaller things if time allowed, and a few days with nothing planned at all.  As much as we enjoyed our time together it was time to take the notebook apart. I discard everything from our Pennsylvania trip. I put the empty notebook in our file drawer to use for our next adventure. I kept the travel brochures for our home state of Ohio to use for weekend or day trip ideas. We’re a modest 1 income couple with grown kids so our trips aren’t extravagant but we have a great time.  Our next trip is taking our grandkids for a weekend to a Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park Camp-Resort in August. They are 3 yrs. and 5 yrs. and I’m sure they will have a blast. I’m not sure if I’ll use the notebook yet since all the activities are at and planned by the resort. We’ll get a schedule at check-in. It’s time to start dreaming of our next weekend getaway or vacation.

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