My Five Favorite Items For Organizing My Life

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It seems like I am always busy.  I sell on eBay,  I blog, I enter contests and sweepstakes, we are trying to get the house up to code so we can foster and adopt, I sell Paparazzi $5 Jewelry in direct sales, I am a member of the PTO even though I don't have children, and I'm a newlywed.  How do I do it all?  Sometimes it's just collapsing in bed for a day or two to recover from my life.  But here are my favorite ways to keep everything organized.


A planner.  I love my Me and My Big Ideas planner.  I also love it is a cheaper version of an Erin Condron planner and the pages are the same size which means if I want to order planner stickers from eBay or Etsy, they will fit perfectly in my planner.  And believe me, those stickers do help.  I have my eye on some checklist rubber stamps because those would save me money as many check list stickers as I use.   I also use lots of washi tape in my planner to help separate lists and other to-do items.

Calendars.   I currently have two calendars in my work area.  One is a Sandra Boynton Mom Calendar.  I don't have kids, but at the end of each day I write down what I accomplished.  I use the family squares for different areas of my life and I can see at a glance how much I am achieving lately. I also have a regular calendar above that where instead of the days being in a list as they are on the mom calendar, it's normal.  I bought this one for 33 cents on clearance at Michaels.  It's one you can add your own photos to it, but instead, I just wrote in inspirational quotes for each month.

I am a huge user of Colored Pens.   I use both Ink Joy and gel pens.  Having a number of colors I can use for different items makes life so much easier as I can color code my planner.

A large medicine pill organizer is another trick I use to save time.  I have morning and evening meds I need to take, as well as vitamins.  I use a one week four compartment pill organizer and since I only have to take meds twice a day, I can sort for two weeks at a time using this type of organizer.

Accordion files.  I love accordion files and find them so useful.  I am always on the watch for them in good condition at garage sales and thrift shops.  I love the letter sized files for filing stickers for my planner, another for filing receipts for taxes, I have another where I keep print offs of previous years' tax returns, and they are even good for storing sentimental items, too.  I love pocket sized ones because of their many compartments.  I have two of these in my purse.  One for totally free coupons, and fast food coupons.  The other is for grocery coupons.  The many pockets make it great to be able to organize my coupons into general ones, ones for different stores, a place to stick receipts until I scan them into Savings Catcher or another money saving app.

I have other things I love for organizing, but these are my top five.