May's Challenge - ORGANIZATION!

This month's challenge is to get organized!  A lot of my stress is caused by the fact that my house, car and office are disasters and I can never find what I need without having to shuffle through pile after pile of paper.  It's embarrassing but organization is one thing that fell to the bottom of the priority list since we had our son.  I would not be exaggerating to say that there is a bin of mail from 2 years ago on my entry way table ... unopened!  2 years!  I'm definitely Type A so this just kills me! 

Anywho, we have lots of areas to work on and I'm going to try to tackle one small area each night.  My husband works nights so after I put the little one to bed I have an hour or so of time to myself before I crash.  My biggest challenge will be to do some organization / cleaning each night and not just head for the couch with a beer.  Like I said, HUGE challenge. 

Over the past 2 nights I worked on organizing my coupons.  In a post to come in the future I'll explain how I used coupons to cut our household expenses by at least half!  I consider my couponing a part-time job because it really does provide extra "income" for our home.  Each week I get 2 newspapers, clip all the coupons for items we use or might use if they were free, and dump them into a shoe box.  Then, after I make my shopping list I have to rummage through this shoe box (usually multiple times) to find the coupons I need for the shopping trip.  Next, I have to rummage through my purse (another disaster) to find any coupons I might have thrown in there for some unknown reason.  It's a mess and huge waste of time.  I've been interested in starting a coupon binder for some time but wasn't sure if it would really make sense for me.  It took 2 nights but I was able to neatly organize about half of my coupons.

Ahhh!  Heaven!  I can see everything I have!  Why didn't I do this sooner?!

I was only able to organize the "household" coupons before I ran out of pages.  I have a page for cleaning supplies, a page for laundry soap, a page for baby products, a page for dental care... you get the idea. 

It's a small step in the right direction.  Here are some of the other projects on my list to tackle this month:

• Create a household binder
• Decluter the entry way table
• Clear off the washer and dryer (we enter our house through the laundry room, so this area has become a dumping ground)
• Pack up all of the outgrown baby items (insert sad face here)
• Organize drawers in the kitchen
• Clean and organize our closet (this is a BIG one)
• And finally, our office / playroom .... a black hole of yuckiness.  It's last on the list for a reason! :)

I'll take a before (don't judge!) and after photo of each project as I get them done. 

Happy organizing!