Home About Mailbox of Goodies Freebies Giveaways Links FAQs Contact
My Precious Pennies

I will be AWAY until late February as we do this moving thing...again.

Ginger from Attention Target Shoppers & Tricia from 1stopmom
will be holding down the fort in the meantime - thank you so much, ladies!

Friday, September 19, 2008

The Friday Declutter challenge



This week was one of my more productive weeks. I finally got around to vacuuming and doing general cleaning around the house. I'm not a fan of cleaning, but this house makes it all that much more difficult due to the fact that it's two stories. I have a torn ligament from my competitive figure skating days, and it just never really healed right. I can function well enough on a day-to-day basis, but certain things just plain old hurts - like going up stairs, or cold weather, both of which we've got plenty of in this new place.

I'm also in major injury-preventative mode.  It is not possible to carry a baby on crutches, or go up the stairs on crutches.  Or go up the stairs with the baby in your arms on crutches.  And it's not like my husband can just take 3 weeks off work to help me out.  Nor is staying put on the couch during his entire 15-hour workday an option either. 

Anyway, I created a new couponing system this week. It was long overdue, and I'm very happy with the results. I've been using it all week to put together my CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart deals, and so far it's working like magic. With my old album system, it was literally a chore to add new coupons. This new system makes adding coupons a lot easier, because I can just stick them in the corresponding envelope immediately after clipping them, instead of having to flip through the pages and find a open slot.

And now that I have a new couponing system, I must have a new couponing station! I'm still using our sofa table as the main couponing area, but since the coupon box won't fit in any of the drawers, I've decided to give it a spot at my desk. It really makes sense though, considering I put together all of my shopping lists at my desk next to the computer. The sofa table faces the TV, while my desk faces the wall, so the sofa table is still going to be where I clip my coupons.



It was just a mere reorganization of the top two shelves of my desk. The only things that moved were my scrap paper pile, which is now on the top shelf, and my pile of binder paper, which now sits under the wicker basket on the top shelf. The white shoe box that I used for my couponing system used to be on the top shelf, but it was just an empty box that I had no better place for. I rarely use binder paper, so I don't really have a problem with it being on the top shelf. I can still reach my scrap paper while sitting, so it's not really a big deal.

My desk is so much more efficient now, because I can just slide the coupon box out to find what I'm looking for - I don't even need to remove it completely from the shelf. It's also right next to my drop boxes - the pink box in the back holds my accordion file and EasySaver booklets, and the metal "love" tin in the front is my drop-box for coupons to be filed. I should be able to get rid of that tin now though, because it's so easy to file coupons away that my drop-box will be the actual coupon box itself!

I also reorganized my blog this week to celebrate my 200th post.  I'm getting back into shape with my coding and HTML-ing, but I'm still very rusty.  I did manage to tidy things up a bit though, so it's less distracting and scroll-hectic now.  I sure hope everyone likes it...!

5 comments:

Forgetfulone said...

Very cool couponing system! Congrats on your new look and your upcoming 200th post.

Marcia Francois said...

Your shelves look SO great! Beautiful job.

And thanks for the reminder - I'll put decluttering my sidebars on my list for next week :)

HDMac said...

You have done a FANTASTIC job! Way to go, girl!!!!!

Me said...

Isn't nice when you are able to make things more efficent for yourself? They don't use coupons here so at least I don't have them to organize.

Anonymous said...

I'm envious. What a great job you've done on both things, the system and the station. I keep thinking I ought/want to coupon, but then I never make the time.

Maybe when I actually get around to doing it, I can ask you for some tips?

 
Custom Blog Design: Blogger Boutique