It’s still too early for spring cleaning, but I am in desperate need of some consolidation. Currently, my daughter and I are sharing a 9’x10′ bedroom at my mother’s house. Needless to say, things are cramped at best. The girl is almost seven years old, and outgrowing her toddler bed. She’s been complaining about it for a while now, and I’m finally getting around to fixing things. I did some online searching and found a full-size bed that should work for us. This frame has a 13″ floor clearance, so I can use full size storage totes underneath. I had considered bunkbeds, but it just seems too juvenile, plus unsafe for either of us.

My first order of cleaning out the space is to get rid of some of the boxes, especially since tomorrow is paper recycling day. I did a lot of online shopping over the holidays, for myself, plus i run a direct sales company out of my home. I have yet to find a system that works well, but that is on my list of things to accomplish this year. I only managed to empty a couple of boxes today, but i did get rid of a lot of paper waste: bank and credit card statements from 2016, kids’ school papers, random other things.

I had previously been storing my bills and statements in an old shoe box. I know, great idea, right?? Well ive realized there is a much better way to organize them than that. who knew?? I sorted the contents of my shoebox by company and from there I removed everything from the envelopes. I saved any return envelopes and threw away all the advertising. Any bills from 2016 went into a box labelled “Shred” and all statements from 2017 were saved in chronological order. My bank is kind enough to send statements that are hole-punched already, so those went straight into a binder. I don’t currently own a holepunch, so all other statements went back into one envelope for each company, in chronological order. I wrote on the front of each envelope “2017 statements”. Those envelopes, plus the empty return envelopes went back into the shoebox.

Now, I’m sure you’re wondering what im saving the return envelopes for. Not long ago I watched a YouTube video by Jordan Page explaining her super simple budget envelope system. Basically, she reuses one of these free envelopes, and keeps her spending money inside for the month. on the outside she records every purchase, and the receipts go right inside the envelope. At the end of the month, the envelopes get filed, and since they are all labeled, finding receipts is super easy. You can watch Jordan explain her system here. I have some free time tomorrow before work, and 2 days off after that. I’m hoping I can get the majority of the clutter removed this week.