An Age Old Storage System

The Office Called Home – Part 5

What are you doing with the items that can’t be stored digitally and won’t fit neatly into your binder filing system?

Not everything can be scanned and stored or physically filed and stored.  To bring resolve to this problem, we resorted to an age old filing system we had in our garage.  

The Thanksgiving Dining Plastic Tubs
You may have been following me when we published a web-post called, “Make Christmas Great Again”.  In this web-post, we discussed how we as a family took Thanksgiving up a notch.  In making improvements to how we do Thanksgiving we purchased new serving dishes and accessories that our family could use for years to come.  So that we could easily store and share the items at various family gatherings, we purchased 2 large plastic tubs. Using these 2 tubs to transport the items from house to house was ingenious for two reasons: 1) the tubs made it easy for carrying and 2) we no longer had to worry about forgetting anything for our dining preparations.  This activity of upgrading Thanksgiving made it that much more of a holy-day.

The Christmas Decorating Tubs
Right after Thanksgiving, Christmas begins to spread through the air and for us it’s time to decorate our home for Christmas.  Let me say this right off the bat, I am extremely organized and meticulous. Everything has a place. Back to Christmas, whenever it’s time to decorate, this process is easy.  We can go right to the garage’s storage closet and simply grab the 2 plastic tubs containing the Christmas decorations. One tub for decorations and the 2nd tub has the lights which, I might add, are all repacked in their original boxes.  Next, all we need is the box with the Christmas tree. Then we’re ready to assemble and decorate for Christmas. There are no worries of missing pieces or misplaced items. Everything we need is located in these (our Christmas) tubs.

Now for the filing tubs
It’s these 2 events and how we store the items that make these special days complete which led us to store other items in this manner.  We have items that just won’t work with a digital copy and won’t fit nicely into “The Binder”.

What do you do with small trinkets you get from special people that you’d never want to part with?  Each year you gather small things that you would not, just could not, discard. So what can you do with those things without having them scattered all over the place and throughout your home?  

There’s the cards you receive from people.  School projects that mean so much to you and your children that one day will be more precious and priceless than the day they were when created.

What about items your friends send you that you wish to keep forever, but don’t want them accidentally discarded, mishandled, or destroyed.  For example, I have my friend Brian’s first product creation because it meant so much to him and me. Where do you store things like this that you just want to keep?  

See the problem?  

Now here’s the solution we developed. We created a filling tub system for such items.   Here’s the steps we took:

1. We purchased a filling tub from a retailer.  Not too small and not incredibly large. The tub has to be manageable and able to store on our shelves in our storage room.  We stack them neatly. The tub needed to be clear so that we can easily see inside.
2. We labeled the filling tub with the year or period representing its content.  As we collect keepsakes throughout the year that we wish to keep and store, we simply add them to the filing tub.
3. We relocated other items we found all over our home which were perfect for this new tub filing system. We found items in the garage and in the attic.  Now they have an organized home of their own. 

Where are you keeping your un-file-able items?

Today is Friday!
If you want to get rid of some of the clutter in your home, try using the filing tub system.  What do you have to lose? Remember this is your life, your home, your business, it’s up to you to maintain your keepsake items in a manner that suits you.

Do me a favor, share this web-post with at least one of your friends and ask them to subscribe to our free email list here, at kerryaclark.com.

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