Monday, June 27, 2011

the five-tab file

On top of organising all of my existing files, I have taken on board a system for sorting incoming mail. Enter the "five-tab plastic pocket", purchased from kikki.K for $5.95.
I love stationery, so was very excited to get something cool that also served an important purpose!

You can label the tabs on the pockets with whatever you want.
(I also inserted a sheet of textured green paper into the front sleeve to make it pretty.)

My categories are:

to pay
to do
to read
to save
to file


So, as mail comes in, it is immediately sorted into one of those categories, or put straight into the recycling. At the end of each week I will file everything in the "to file" pocket and we're ready to go again the next week!

I really recommend getting one of these if you need a better way of dealing with your snail mail.
When you use it properly, it is wonderful! 

What's not so 'wonderful' is the human in this equation. We have (mostly) managed to avoid random papers around the place, but my old self is trying to ruin the system. I am not sure where to keep this file, so I put it in the bookshelf near our dining table, so it would be out of the way. I then forgot about it for a little while until I got a letter in the mail to tell us our bills hadn't been paid. Whoops!
So I took the file, complete with the unpaid bills, in to my computer desk so I could pay them. The entire five-tab file then went missing for a couple of weeks!

Any suggestions on where we should keep our five-tab file?

Friday, June 17, 2011

the undies in the fridge

Now there's a thought. Putting on a pair of undies straight from the fridge! Brrrrrr

I would have to say that is the weirdest misplaced item I've found in our house to date.

I don't need a lot of help with spreading random junk around the house but, when small children are involved, you can end up with hilarious results. Often they are just things that have gone walkabout. Sometimes they are things I have confiscated - so end up out of reach near wherever I happen to be. This blog entry features just some of the strange things that I have discovered around our house.

Undies in the fridge (still don't know who put them there or why)













Basketball on the kitchen bench (confiscated item)






Play phone in the utensil drawer (who knows, while I'm cooking I may suddenly need to make an emergency call to Thomas the Tank Engine)

The ride-on-train. (You name it, we have found it in the back of this train. Keys, mobile phone, half-eaten food (!), kitchen utensils....)
The ever evasive 'Teddy' could turn up anywhere. Particularly annoying when Teddy goes missing and our dear child will not go to bed without him - I'm pretty sure Teddy gets lost at least once a day. (check the dirty laundry basket. yep, there he is. eewww)
Rock hard stale bread and one corn flake in the mini drawer from the book end. (must of been there for a while... placed inside so delicately)

Bowls from the kitchen turn up being worn as hats. We are often missing containers and mixing bowls. They become hats, 'fruit salad' mixing bowls, shopping baskets, drums, and more!

As an aside... funny story. James (left) holds two large bowls up in front of his chest and says "Look mum! I've got big booms!"
"You've got what!?" I reply
"Big BOOMS!" He repeats.
So, yeah - he had big 'booms', that is, two big loud drums. He usually calls them drums (or, more acurately, 'grums'), just not that time. Haha.


If we've ever lost a baby we look in the toy box. (actually, any box or opening)









Other things:
Egg whisk in my sock drawer, three matchbox cars in my shoe at one time (had to put my foot in before I noticed), play money down my top, my wallet in the cot (took me two days to find it - I didn't think to look there), last-nights left overs in the cupboard with the platters instead of in the fridge, entire car garage in the dirty clothes basket... actually if I keep going we may be here all day.

I mentioned my idea for this blog to a dear friend of mine who recalled finding a rolling pin in her freezer. She was living with two other ladies at the time and they still don't know how it got there.

Would love to hear about the weirdest misplaced item you have found in your house.