The Before and After

A few days ago as part of Amber's photo challenge, I posted the picture below which showed how my oldest son's art/work table looked on that particular day. I have been planning to get him a system in place to organize his overwhelming stacks of paperwork. He is 7 1/2 and, therefore, old enough now to use a file system similar to what adults would use. I looked at an office supply store for a filing box on a cart to place next to his table. The only one I found that was what I wanted was almost $40 and I didn't want to spend that much. Instead, I decided to repurpose a scrapbooking file system that I've had for several years. I bought something (for $17) to hold all the scrapbook paper I had been storing in my file box and helped my son set up his own filing system.

This morning he and I spent a bit of time going through the mess shown above and organizing it into the appropriate files. I am trying to encourage him to recycle (get rid of!!) some of his beloved papers. However, that is a battle that won't be over anytime soon. For now I am just thrilled to have cleared off the top of his table so he can actually work at it. And I will be able to keep on him about getting his papers filed as soon as he completes them. The first photo below shows his pristine work area. MUCH improvement over before, huh?

The next photo shows the categories we came up with to organize his many projects and papers. Quite a while ago I had read on an organization website or seen on an HGTV show that it is most efficient to have your file labels all on the left side instead of spacing them out. Does that make sense? Also, it's best to organize them alphabetically so you can quickly find the file you need. I had always organized files alphabetically, but prior to getting that tip I had spaced my file labels out in a staggered fashion. Now I always have them lined up on the left and it is MUCH faster to quickly find the file you need. Your eyes don't need to scan back and forth which makes it more efficient.

So now I can check off another organizational project from my LONG list! It's all about making BabySteps and staying the course. I'll write more later about my progress with Flylady. I am LOVING it!