quick organizing project

A quick one for sure. I swear, this summer is keeping me so busy, or should I say my kids are keeping me so busy, I don't have time to do much of anything other than cook, do dishes, wash clothes, and give kids baths, lots of baths. So my projects (believe me there are a lot) are by necessity short and sweet. 

Oh, the papers that come in to this house are frightening. Like, massive boxes taken to the recycling bin on a regular basis (in addition to our weekly recycling pick up!) frightening. Some people in my family, I won't say names, (mostly tall people and small people-that pretty much includes them all) think every piece of paper is important and keep-worthy. And since I am the scrapbooker of the family, they give them to me and say, "we should keep this" so of course I do and then I get mad because I have a massive pile and then I have to find a place to put it all and then that person will say, "do you know where that ___ is?" Grr. It makes me grumpy. 

We have a designated drawer for phone books. I know, there are a million ways to find phone numbers besides those big books but we pull them out quite regularly, we are so old fashioned. Get over it. I also keep a real hanky in my purse that I use and wash regularly, I'm a granny in disguise. 

Any-who, we also kept our school directories in that drawer too. Big Tall Hubby gets one from school each year (staff and students) and I still have some from my teaching days and the kids have been getting class lists every year. 

OK, it sounds crazy to keep all those but I swear to you, no computer search engine is better at finding an old phone number than me rooting through our drawer of digits.** However, it was getting to be a big mess.

See the pile on the left? Those are our lists, etc. 

 I bought a cute turquoise (love all the turquoise everywhere now) notebook and some plastic pockets, who doesn't love the office supply aisle at Target? Oh, I'm the only nerd who does? Well, I also go to Hallmark just to read the funny cards for fun. I'm a true individual.

 I made a cover using old scrapbook paper and stickers.

 The small directories are in the pockets. 

 There are also notes I glued to notebook paper* and put in plastic sleeves from my scrapbook stash.

Class lists*** went in sleeves too. Then I took apart the bigger directories and hole punched them and put them in the back. All done. Easy peasy. Cute. Antiquated, but who cares?!  I'm granny-ish, so antiques and I get along just fine. 

*I kept the notes only because it is easy for me to find certain things because I remember it is on a yellow post it note (for example). I know I could make a master list but I am a visual person and my memory works better that way. Told you, I'm an individual.

** I know I could make some sort of master list on my computer and keep it there, thus avoiding the whole paper trail thing but I do not trust it. I lost three years of pictures a few years ago (including Tanner's infant pictures) when our old computer died so I do not keep everything on the computer. I still take film pictures sometimes. I know, so does your grandma. Maybe you could give me her number? We'd probably have lots in common. I can designate a page in my new book for my new granny friends.

***I tried to blur out all the readable phone numbers, don't be a weird computer stalker and zoom in on my pictures and call kids from my kids' classes, that would make you a total fruit loop. OK?