Works for Me Wednesday — Three Ring Binders

 

I love 3-ring binders. 

I recently began my love affair with the ubiquitous office supply when I decided to purge my huge stack of parenting magazines.  It was difficult for me to throw away magazines that had articles like, “How to Get Your Baby to Sleep Through the Night,” and “How to Get Your Toddler to Eat Vegetables”.  I realize I could find all of this information on the Internet, but I like to have certain things in paper form.  A colorful picture of 52 examples of finger foods is one of those things.  So, rip, rip, rip.  I ripped out anything I wanted to keep, inserted them into plastic page protectors, organized the articles by subject, and voila, I had my own personalized toddler reference guide.

In addition to the toddler reference guide, I am in the process of archiving all of our digital photos.  A photographer friend at Life As Art recently wrote an awesome blog post about how to go about this.  After organizing all of my files, I burned them all to DVDs and have them stored in plastic sleeves along with contact sheets in another 3-ring binder.  Talk about organized.

Lastly, like Shannon at Rocks in my Dryer, I have a 3-ring notebook that houses all of our correspondence from our Compassion International children.  I have a section for each child and extra envelopes, stationary and postage in the front.  It helps me be consistent with my communication to them.  It also helps me keep track of each child and what’s going on in their lives.  One of these days, when they are all grown up, I’ll have this memory book to look at and see God’s faithfulness in each of their lives.

Works for me!  What works for you?  Comment here and then be sure to check here to see everyone else’s tips.

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