Nightwolf's Den

June was all about the home office and the bathroom.

Our home office has migrated back inside again. Not that I’m 100% happy about that but at least I’m warm while doing the bookwork and keeping an eye on small people. Hubby & I tend to hoard different things in the office. Me, it’s all about paper and pens. Hubby, it’s computer parts. Upside – I chucked all my pens that don’t work. Hubby sorted and chucked a whole heap of old (& I’m talking really, really old) computer parts, discs and cords.

Next step was the digital clutter, a slow and steady pace on this one. I started with my work email and saved what I really HAD to keep and then binned the rest unless it is something pertaining to current clients. Then I moved onto my blog email. I’ve managed to get my inbox  to zero for the first time in ages. I’ve even decluttered a whole heap of emails that are no longer relevant. Go me! Now to start on my personal email

Over the next week I plan to unsubscribe to email lists instead of just deleting them. Only keep what is essential and interesting.

I’m slowly sorting al the files on my computer and 2 main external hard drives. I had so many double (& some triple ups!) and some files I no longer need so in the bin they went. I’m pretty good at backing up photos and files now since I had a hard drive crash last year and I thought I had lost all the photos of our youngest. Not a nice feeling.

Finally we moved onto the bathroom and then makeup. Look – clean bathroom 🙂 (just excuse the soccer gear hanging in the shower)

July is the half way point and sees us moving onto the linen closet and the master bedroom.

May was all about paper work. Our home binder is slowly filling up now and we have better systems in place to deal with all the paper clutter that comes into the house.

We got rid of our home phone a few years ago but I decided to make a message centre to put in our ‘family command centre’. Much easier to remember something I have to let hubby know if he’s out & forgets his mobile.

Bills – we have 2 major bills – rent for our business laptops and our internet/mobiles. Both get taken out on a certain day each month. Any incidental bills are filed into the appropriate folder and made not of in our budget. Due dates are added to the calendar. This system seems to be working ok for us.

I created a ‘family command centre’ in the kitchen under our whiteboard (& in between the Soda Stream and water filter). Notes and invites go on the cork board. This week’s menu is on the whiteboard. Our month calendar is underneath. Our family/home binder sits on the trolley underneath that along with my file for bills/mail that needs actioning (& our hand vac)

Next we moved onto tax items and receipts. Since we run our own small business I keep all our receipts in a lidded plastic box in the office and then after we have been to our accountant, I scan it or file it. At the end of the financial year I shred or burn any receipts we no longer need to keep. Anything that needs to be kept, including the previous years tax return info is kept in lidded file box, arranged by financial year

Our filing system is pretty simple – 2 files for each member of the family. One for important stuff I know we may need to access and one for papers that I want to keep but aren’t super important. The rest of our papers are sorted by what they are – sports, business, house etc Have used this month as a good excuse to go through and sort/shred our filing cabinets.

Challenge 21 was super easy – we rarely get magazines and any newspapers we get are piled in a bag and stored to help start our wood fire in winter. Catalogues get read then binned.

Challenge 22 looked at passwords, warranties and manuals. Since that finishes in June I’ll be back next month with how we are going.

Kitchen update – a bit messy but nothing a quick tidy wouldn’t fix. It’s finally sinking in how easy it is to keep the kitchen cleanish. Still trying to get the rest of the house on board.