Friday, March 25, 2011

Making the paperwork....... work!

Time to get back to the organising.  I spent most of Jan & a good part of Feb bottling up tomato relish, & jams etc..... which meant other things had to be placed on hold.  It's a time management thing, what can I say, but when the garden has ripe produce ....... well, that becomes the priority.  Meantime the incoming paperwork keeps piling on up.  Being in a relatively new place (ok, well, its been close to 1 yr here, but things are still trying to find permanent homes to live in), I've tried a few different ways of making the paperwork - work efficiently.  So after much debate & trial & error, I've moved a few things around.  I find that the mail holder I made (pictured) was not working well beside my roll top desk.  It just was not in the right place, so I've moved it closer to the kitchen and where I tend to open mail & sort various stuff that comes in the mail box.  It has various pockets on it and I can now pop things into the pockets that need to be taken with me when I head out to town.  Incoming letters go into one pocket, where they sit until they've been replied to.  Another pocket holds all outgoing mail.  A large pocket holds other items that might need to be taken with me when I head out.  As I sort through the daily incoming paperwork, (I try to do this while I'm cooking dinner) - it goes into various places.  All incoming bills go into a folder that is kept in the top drawer of cupboard.  The files you see sitting on the small cabinet hold specific stuff - things that are needing follow up work done on before they can be filed away.  I try to have a different coloured file/envelope for each "catagory", which then eliminates the need to sort through a pile to find what you want each time.  It's out the way, yet easy to see & get to & keeps things organized & time effective.  The biggest plus, is that I don't have that horrible "pile of paperwork" sitting on the kitchen bench piling up waiting for "something" to be done with it all.
Oh, and in case you are wondering..... yes, I did have to find a home for all the preserving - it now lives in the bottom of the kitchen dresser - and as you can see, I now have to find a way of fitting in all the other "little bits & pieces" hmmm.  It's a work in progress  and as Pete keeps telling me "Rome was not built in a day" - even though I might wish it were LOL

1 comment:

Mrs. Doug said...

Mmmmm home canned jams and preserves. I'm glad the garden is producing for you. When does your season wrap up? We are still under snow at our house. Though we've had some warmer temps and some rain it just hasn't been warm enough to get rid of all the snow that fell. In fact last night we got even more and there was a light coating on the ground and the cars this morning when I went out to go to work.

Spring will come as it always does, but I'm so impatient for it. I even received some strawberry plants in the mail yesterday... don't think they'll be planted for another month, but they probably will be fine in the 'fridge until then.

I like your organizing tips. It's so good when you find a system that works for you.

Happy day to you!