Orderliness: What if everything DOESN'T have a place?

Thanks for your post, jkkyer. I’m old school, too & enjoy hanging onto old photos, as well, especially since my mom has Alzheimer’s and my FIL passed away a couple years ago. I would, however, like to get a bit more digital in the receipts/bank statements/etc. category. We have home, farm, business, & medical papers, which all NEED to be filed, but the incredible amount of space paperwork takes up is overwhelming. I try to get rid of anything older than 7 years, but hubby says we should at least keep 5 years. Any advice on this? Has anyone out there used NeatDesk or anything similar? I do pay bills online & keep those receipts in a folder in my email, but we still get paper bills & I need a better way to organize for taxes & such. 

The app we use is called Tiny Scan. You take a photo of your document with your phone, and it converts it to a PDF. You can then save it to your phone or email it to yourself or someone else. We do have a printer/scanner, but this is quicker and easier. We’ve used it for bills, receipts, even doctor’s office paperwork! I never thought about using it for children’s art!

For those of you who feel you still need actual paper documents in a filing cabinet, do you mind if I ask what types of documents you’re saving? And is there a particular reason why they can’t be scanned and saved digitally? Just curious. 😉

Lindsey, the only things that I keep in a few hanging binders with page protectors are birth certificates, social security cards, auto and home titles, goat registrations, current Insurance declaration pages, and emergency contacts. I have scans of these too but must have the originals for the first three listed.

I use one-inch hanging binders that fit nicely in a filing drawer.

Well, I guess I forgot about birth certificates. Of course we have those!

I don’t have much time right now, as we are on our way to some friends’ house, but I’m going to PM you later.

As for the receipts….I don’t ever save receipts! I’ve regretted that a handful of times, but obviously not enough to start saving them. I usually tell the person checking me out that I don’t want my receipt and walk out without it. I don’t like my purse being a trashcan either, and receipts almost always end up in my purse and in the trash when I clean it out. I can understand saving receipts for business tax ride offs or whatever, and if that were me, I would use the Tiny Scan app as soon as I got the receipt to make it digital and file it right away.

Space limitations….my thoughts on that are to look at it as a positive thing rather than negative. When we moved out of 3,200 sq. ft. into 1,058 sq. ft., my attitude wasn’t, “Crud, this is such a small space. Where am I going to put everything? It’s never going to work.” My thoughts were, “Oh boy! This is exciting! I have 1,000 sq ft, and it’s going to be so fun to get creative with our space!” Like it literally makes me giddy. I love the challenge of seeing how little we can live with. We continue to purge, believe it or not. The kids have fewer toys than ever before. I went from two sets of dishes with 10 place settings each to 1 set with 8 place settings. My husband and I are sharing a closet with 3 rods, and 1 rod is totally empty.

This has been so freeing, and I can’t stop! Lol

Hubby and I have pretty much decided that when the kids move out, we are going to get us one of those tiny houses on wheels to be our permanent home so we can just go wherever we want and take everything we own with us. (I know. We are crazy.)

I could totally get into the idea of a tiny house. It would be so cozy! and simple! But…. then I’d have to give up my dream of handfuls of grandchildren visiting me all at the same time. 🙂   

@jkkyker, I totally understand the grandchildren conundrum with a tiny house! We’ve thought about that too. For us, it’s one of those “we’ll cross that bridge when we get there” kind of things. My husband and I had children very early in life, so we will be just shy of 40 when they’re finished with homeschooling and will be 18 and 19. I was married by 19 and had my first child at 20, so I recognize that this may also happen with our children and we may be grandparents at 40-41–which is completely fine! Hubby and I also want to have some time for just us when the children grow up too. We love the idea of a tiny house, but of course, we love our family and our children more. I think we will pursue living in a tiny home eventually, but there’s nothing stopping us from upsizing if and when the time comes to have large family gatherings or grandchildren over to stay the night.

I don’t like to plan on the “what-ifs” years in advance. I think it’s ok to do something for a season, knowing nothing is permanent. Dh and I also dream of living in a downtown loft one day too….we have a lot of dreams! Ha! I like to think that God is good, and He will provide for whatever season of life in which we find ourselves–whether that’s just the two of us in a tiny home, or in a skyrise loft apartment, or in a modest-size home on acreage with cows and chickens. All of those scenarios are desires we have at some point!

I was married at 19 1/2, and my first child was born 3 months before my 21st birthday. (No, I wasn’t pregnant when I got married! LOL) I got pregnant again 8 months later, and she was born just after my 22nd birthday. So, I’ll be almost 39 when child #1 is 18 and barely 40 when child #2 is 18. Of course, they are welcome to live with us until they are married, and we don’t push college and moving out at 18. But by that time, they should be able to have jobs and take care of themselves so Hubby and I can have a bit of fun without them!