A Couple Of Organizing Tips

This weekend we finally cleaned up everything Christmas-related, which meant it was time to clean up all the holiday greeting cards that we received off my desk. I don’t know about you, but I always feel bad throwing away other people’s cards. But to paraphrase Becky Higgins, I’m not a keeper of other people’s memories, just my own. Well, I still feel bad about throwing other people’s cards away. So I came up with a way to archive the cards electronically. It’s called… wait for it… scanning!

Two years ago, when I got tired of my desktop clutter, I invested in the Fujitsu Scansnap S1500 document scanner. This thing is absolutely the best clutter-busting tool that I’ve ever purchased. I’m not totally paperless, but every month we scan all our important documents and receipts, and get them off our desks! Both our computers are backed up via Crash Plan and also external hard drives, so I feel pretty good about having our documents in electronic format. We do have filing cabinets for things that are must-keeps, like insurance and tax papers. Ok, now I’ve digressed into a totally different post on organizing documents and going paperless.

Back to holiday greeting cards. I sorted the cards we received into three piles.
The pile on the left are cards with glitter, and 3D cards. Those cannot be scanned. I took photos of the front and inside of those. The pile in the middle are flat photo cards without written greetings on the back. These will be batch-scanned into jpegs. The pile on the right are cards where I want to scan the front and back because of design or handwritten notes. I set up my scanner software to batch scan those into 2-page PDF files each.

Then it was just a matter of putting each batch into the scanner and pushing the scan button.

The Scansnap has a document feeder and can scan multiple pages at a very fast rate. Not only that, but it can scan the front and back at the SAME time. In five minutes, I had everything scanned and into my “2012 Holiday Cards” folder.


I can click on each one to look at it in full size. Now I’ll be able to remember all our friends’ kids’ names! :) AND now I don’t feel bad about discarding their cards!

One other organization thing. I found this clear document sorter at my local Staples on Saturday. It came home with me because it is perfect for organizing my monthly scrapbook kits from Studio Calico! 
 
It is 13” wide, so my 12x12 papers from the kit fits in there. Also, it is tiered, and it is clear, so I can see everything! I keep the current monthly kit out on my craft table so I can see it and use it during the month. Then I put what’s left over into a large zip lock bag, and put the next month’s new kit out on my table. One of my followers on Instagram said she found a very similar clear document sorter on Amazon. It appears to have the same dimensions, so it is probably the same, if not, then very similar to the one I got from Staples.

I used to use this blue melamine tray from Target.

I really liked it, but it took up SO much room on my table. Now this Staples clear document sorter takes up a lot less room on my table and I can see everything. It’s perfect!