Life Well Lived: Get Organized

I’m taking part in a series called Life Well Lived, where I answer questions like I’m an expert. I’m not an expert but it appeals to my life long quest to be Dear Abby so please indulge me.

This week’s question is: How do you organize paperwork both online and off?

Paperwork is the bane of my existence. Do you know how much paperwork a 25 week micro-preemie generates? I’m pretty sure that I need to plant an entire forest to make up for the amount of paperwork that is stored in my house. This place is a tinderbox.

On top of that, I make a living as a blogger which means that I have receipts, invoices and all those other little things you have to keep record of so that you aren’t scrambling come tax time. It’s a lot of stuff, y’all.

I use this family planning binder on a daily basis. I stash all the paperwork that comes through the house in the appropriate folder when I receive it. And once or twice a week I go through and deal with it all. I pay the bills, mail birthday cards, submit insurance claims, file receipts, submit insurance claims, file invoices, match up coupons, submit insurance claims and did I mention I submit insurance claims?

Insurance: praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. Seriously, I’m so thankful to have good insurance (see: million dollar baby, Scarlette) but they send us a LOT of paperwork. And by a lot, I mean if I could probably make a life-size replica of the Eiffel Tower from it.

I also have a filing cabinet divided into a million subfolders, which doubles as bedside table because our office doubles as a guest room. 3/4 of it is devoted to Scarlette. There is also a whole section devoted to all of the sheet music Jeff prints out, which does not subtract from my paperwork dilemma but guys who play guitar are pretty hot so I let that slide. One folder is labeled College Transcripts which means I might have a hoarding problem. Everything eventually moves out of the binder and into the filing cabinet or the little numbered mail holder pictured above so that I know when to mail stuff.

For my blogging business, I do everything online and then import it all into Excel spreadsheets. I break everything down by category for my expenses and various sources of income and make it all nice and tidy. I have no idea what I am doing when it comes to this sort of thing and I highly recommend this ebook for learning the basics of organizing your online business documents and getting things set up correctly for taxes.

Then I take it to my mother in law, who is an accountant and she magically turns it into a finished set of tax documents. It is a beautiful thing. I recommend marrying someone who’s mother is an accountant. Also, someone who’s sister in law makes amazing cupcakes like mine. Obviously, I married very well.

You can see what other bloggers who are probably much more efficient and well organized than me do here and enter to win an iPod Touch here!

 (affiliate links used as I love and endorse both of these products and use them daily)