This month, I’m an Organizing Junkie along with several other blogs, is having a month long organizational challenge, and I thought it was a good motivator to help me make a few areas of my home more efficient.

The first week’s assignment is to work on the office or desk. My office space is a corner in my living room, and I have let clutter accumulate with the busyness of the just past holiday season.

I’ve had a home binder for awhile to help me keep track of things, but it had started to overflow with everything, and was getting too full to manage easily. So I purchased a few more binders and decorated the fronts with scrapbook paper.

Now I have separate binders for my:
Blog – To keep my schedule, ideas I have for my blog, things I need to do on it, and receipts of earnings for tax purposes.
Budget and Bills – This holds my current bills to pay (in a pocket tab), my checkbook and credit card ledgers, since I use a debit card and credit card for most purchases, and my current budget ledger where I keep track of  balances of our household categories.
Medical – To keep a list of our doctors and their phone numbers, and a brief log of illnesses and medications (like antibiotics) we have taken.
School – This has test results, report cards and miscellaneous school related papers to keep.
Home and Auto – This is empty at the moment, but will hold home and auto receipts and a record of work done or improvements.
Transcripts – This has official home school documents that I need to access occasionally.

I used page dividers and tab pages with pockets so I could easily tuck papers in, and then later use my hole puncher for more permanent items to include in each notebook.

I sorted through all the papers on my desk and about 10 magazines, and tore out what I wanted to keep, and then recycled the magazines.

The new binders replaced all my stacked papers and made them very easily accessible and organized.

After moving some furniture, including my desk, around a bit, I am really satisfied with how much more efficiently I think my office space will work.

These brown bins contain my office supplies, camera accessories, and my kids’ school papers that I’ll hang on to till the end of the year. Because of my cube organizers, I was able to keep my desk mostly free of supplies which is nice because I like to spread things out when I am working on something.

The one item that helps me tremendously with keeping my home life running somewhat smoothly is my daily planner.

I get one every year, and use it every single day to keep track of immediate duties, and things that are upcoming as well, like when a bill needs to be paid, or when library books need to be renewed, birthdays, appointments…  This frees my mind of so much mental clutter.

My favorite kind of planner is the ones that show a week at a time.
We also keep a calendar on the refrigerator for our various family appointments so we can all see a month at a time.

I’m looking forward to using my new set up to be able to function more efficiently, and keep up with paper clutter more effectively.
I hope this gives you some helpful ideas that you might be able to use.