Thursday, 3 March 2011

15

How to make your bills into a feature

O K organiser empty

Since Jamie started school and Maia nursery, I have been drowning in a sea of administration. Everyday they come home with newsletters, forms, requests for checks in ridiculously small denominations, permission slips. Add that to our normal bills and paperwork, and more correspondence from the NHS than I thought possible, there are papers everywhere. Literally.

O K organiser small and large cars

On one of my previous posts about Operation: Save Our Collective Lives, auntninn said:
I'll share one of the best tips I've heard lately, though. Figure out if you're an "innie" or an "outie" person when it comes to organizing. This was a revelation to me because I love to put things away and have things in nice neat little cubbies. But I'm also an out-of-sight-out-of-mind person. So anything *really* important gets piled, because I don't trust myself to remember it if I put it away.
How true is that? Answer: heaps. I am an outie, Steven is an innie. Ergo, we have had a lot of conflict lately because I leave stuff out if I still need to deal with it and he's been filing it away and I've threatened to stab him* if he doesn't stop doing that. *Not really, but it's getting close.

O K organiser small cars

So what's the answer? I need things to be out where I can see them, he needs things off of every available surface. My solution:

O K organiser in use

I recovered an old photo canvas with The Fabric That Matches Everything and made four pockets out of some Orla Kiely car fabric I scored recently. The big car pockets are for me and Steven, the small car pockets are for the kids. The orange and green fits in with the colour scheme of our kitchen. It almost makes me want to deal with the paperwork. Almost.

15 comments:

  1. i like! not only is the car fabric extreamly cool and being orange its the best colour ever it tidys up for you! wish i had wall space for such a thing!

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  2. This is the best idea ever! I may actually have to do this. I am an innie, the heaps of paperwork in the kitchen is making me crazy, the Boy is an outie... his office looks like a post room exploded.

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  3. I love this. And love to think that something so beautiful could solve the teetering piles of "deal with me NOW" correspondence all over my kitchen. But I doubt it....

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  4. Love it.

    Much better than my solution of covering the fridge door with bits of paper (why does school need to send so many home?). Eventually some fall off (lost) down the side of the fridge and I find that an excellent way to manage my filing.

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  5. Genius! We have much the same problem here and this would be a great solution (and probably one that I am going to blatantly rob from you if this is OK?!) Fits in great with the home organisation kick ass thats occuring round here!!

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  6. Great idea! And it looks so cute on the wall!

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  7. What a great idea! And much more appealing than the usual criss-crossed strips of ribbon on a board to hold papers etc.

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  8. I am so stealing this idea.... I have some polka dot fabric left from making the tablecloth :)
    I'm an innie married to an outie too ;)

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  9. Beautiful! I'll confess that I still haven't solved this problem for myself (not a lot of wall space). I love this solution.

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  10. Brilliant! Although in our household that would be stuffed to capacity and falling off the wall in about a fortnight.
    I made beautiful fabric covered pinboards with our initials on to help deal with our paper mountain. The result? You can't see how beautiful they are because they are covered with paper.

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  11. Cathy Eriksson3 March 2011 at 16:28

    I see you have found multiple uses for your new staple gun. I love it!

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  12. Fab idea! and I'm seriously enjoying the orange fabric, think I'd just stare at that boards all day, rather than do paperwork :)

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  13. I love that! But I have 3 children and now my brain hurts from trying to figure out how I would make that work. Maths not a strong point

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