Organized to save money, energy, and time
Photograph Credit: Rita's Italian Ice
In celebration of the first day of spring, Rita’s Italian Ice is offering each customer a free regular-sized Italian ice today, March 20, 2012.
To find a Rita’s Italian Ice, click on this store locator.
Just stop by between 12:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. to enjoy your cool drink.
Last week was a great week spent playing with my kids. We participated in lots of activities, most away from home, and had a great time. Though I did not make much progress at home, I would not trade the time spent with my family. Priceless!
In sharing Week #2’s Project Simplify task, I could not decide which area to tackle: my pantry or my freezer. Well, I decided . . . with the beautiful weather and my children outside, I chose to defrost, clean, and reorganize our chest freezer.
Though not housed in my kitchen, our chest freezer is definitely at the heart of our kitchen. With items placed, removed, and shifted to find other items, I no longer knew what food I had available in the freezer. In addition, the inside had accumulated about ½” thick of ice. So, it was time to tackle the ice and the clutter while organizing our freezer space.
Before After
Now I know what foods I have which allowed me to pass on a sausage deal this week because I had 4 packages in the freezer. Prior to organizing the freezer, I would have purchased more sausage because I did not know how many I had in my stockpile. By organizing and reorganizing, I am saving money, energy, and time, and that is using time wisely.
If you participated in this Project Simplify task, then please leave a link to your results or post your pictures in the comments.
With Week #1 and #2 complete, Project Simplify is moving to Week #3 – Closets, Countertops, and Drawers. As I return to our normal routine, I hope to make some good progress on our home this week. Next week, I’ll report back on my progress. Enjoy the process, and happy organizing!
Question: How often do you declutter a space in your home?
If you are just starting to organize your important documents, you may want to start at the beginning. This series began with Box 1, and today’s post completes category 3 of Box 2.
Under the category of Major Medical, our summary page and identification card information resides in the fifth file opening of an accordion filing system.
The other items housed in this file slot are the benefits guide and correspondence.
Note: My filing system will look different from your system because our lives, policies, and documents are not the same. I share my organizational structure with you as a guide to organizing your documents. Please adjust this system to meet your needs.
This booklet (250+ pages) includes explanation of benefits, premium amounts, contact information, and an overview of the health plans and other benefits offered through my husband’s employer. When I question our benefits, I consult this guide for the answer or the contact number for the department to ask.
If we receive any notices or changes to our major medical policy, I would add them to this file. At this time, I keep in this file our COBRA Initial Notification Memo. Should we ever lose our health insurance, this memo proves that our family is eligible for COBRA insurance.
In adding our Insurance Benefits Guide and correspondence to our file, our major medical category in Box 2 of our important insurance documents is complete. Keeping similar documents together with staples or paper clips makes retrieval quick and easy.
In using time wisely, I paper clip our documents and label the categories. Find a system that works for you, and stay consistent throughout your files. You’ll be glad you did. Happy organizing!
Wishing you the luck of the Irish today! Beware of those who pinch if you choose not to wear green today. (I already pinched my hubby for his failure to wear green. Couldn’t let him get away with it. 😉 )
For those who love the holiday spirit, you might find a parade or enjoy a quick view of Chicago’s parade including the dyed-green Chicago River during the scenes from The Fugitive (1993).
Photograph Credit: Flickr (Bert Kauffmann)
However you spend your day, enjoy using time wisely on this
Photograph Credit: Amazon.com
Oh, the value of our $43 personal articles insurance policy! Paul and I have insured my wedding rings and our 2 cameras on this insurance policy. Our cost is $43 per year to fully insure these items and worth every penny.
When the girls and I attended a Valentine’s Day party, I was taking pictures of the exchange of cards. One of the attendees backed into my insured point-and-shoot camera and jammed the lens.
At first, I was upset. Not because of the accident, but because here was a fantastic photo opportunity, and my camera would not work. Realizing that I would need a new camera, I did not panic at the cost because the accident was a covered incident. By using time wisely and insuring our expensive property, we hold a personal articles policy to protect our budget when accidents occur.
Since the camera would not take pictures, I put it away. Later, I called our insurance agent and explained the situation. Our agent looked at our policy and determined that he could reimburse us up to $160 for a replacement camera.
With a $160 budget, my husband went looking and found a great camera, retailing for $249, on sale for $183.98 with a case and memory card. Realizing that this camera was a great product, on sale, and we would receive reimbursement of $160, we purchased the camera.
Upon receipt, we worked with the camera to make sure it worked properly. When it did, we took our broken camera and receipt for the new camera to our insurance agent.
The agent confirmed that the old camera was the insured camera model and wrote us a check for $160 (the retail value of our old, broken camera). He then deleted the old camera from our policy and added our new camera with a replacement value of $249 (listed on the receipt).
Though we paid $183.98 for our new camera, we received a $160 check bringing our camera replacement cost down to $23.98 which included a camera case and memory card. Our personal articles policy covered the accident and allowed us to upgrade to a new model without breaking our budget.
If you have valuable cameras, electronics, jewelry, or collections (i.e., coins, stamps, etc.), you might consider a personal articles policy. A little research and protection now can save you money, energy, and time in the future. In using time wisely, a personal articles policy can help in stretching your dollars. I know, because it saved us $160. Happy savings!
Question: What items do you or would you add to your personal articles policy?
