The closet shuffle: All filed away

Earlier this month I showed off phase one of the two-phase closet switch-a-roo, which involves emptying the contents of the office closet into the guest room closet to make way for baby. After my brief blogging hiatus (excused by the fact that I was in New York and then Buenos Aires....yep, more on that later) I am back to show you what I got done before I started jet-setting.

The main project I had to tackle during the closet shift process was to develop a new filing system. The old accordion filing system had gotten out of hand, and with a baby on the way I figured we could use a little more filing space anyway for our growing family. So when I left off the whole project looked like this. Now the office closet is empty except for one or two lingering small items, and the guest room closet is well fitted. Here's the guest room closet today:

I went through most of its contents in the previous post, so I won't bore you with those details again, but I will say that I went through all my crafting items (does it make me sound lame when I say all my crafting items? Yes, most likely) that I've been using/collecting since my early childhood. I threw out items like the dried up paint from when I was 10 years old and some busted pens that have been lingering since early high school. I separated out items that are great for kids to use for crafts -- googly eyes, pipe cleaners, sequins -- from those items that I use on a semi-regular basis -- craft glue, ribbon, stamps, paper punches...mostly items for making cards -- and stowed the kid-friendly craft items in a plastic bin in the office closet. The other plastic craft bin you can see on the middle shelf of the guest room closet. So, I consolidated, and I planned ahead for toddler years when some kid crafting supplies will be handy, which I realize is all quite far away but at least I know what I've got on hand and it's not taking up much space.

But back to the bigger issue: filing. You may have spied my filing solution at the bottom of the closet. Yup, a plastic two-drawer filing cabinet. I had mentioned how Craigslist would be the best place for the two-drawer wooden filing cabinet I was seeking, and that would have been true if I had been glued to Craigslist every second of every day. The reality, though, is that I was looking to spend $50 or less, I had very specific file cabinet dimensions I was seeking, and every time I found an ideal file cabinet and I'd email the seller, they'd reply that it had just been sold and they needed to take down the ad.

So, after a few weeks of that, I decided while at Target to give the cheap plastic bin a try. I was shocked when I whipped out my mini-measuring tape, which I now keep in my purse-within-a-purse in my bag, and I discovered that this little Target item fit my odd dimensions exactly. And it cost $24. I'll take it. Then I hopped over to Office Depot where I spent $25 for hanging file folders. Then I got cranking with the label maker.

If you have super vision and excellent screen resolution, you might be able to tell that the filing system is divided into Family Files and Receipts and Manuals, which is not too far off from the original system in the accordion folders.

Let's start with the Family Files. I get red folders, Matt gets blue folders, and green folders are designated for those items that we share. Here's what I came up with:

One red and one blue folder for each:

• Identity -- crucial documents (maybe we'll transfer these to a fire-safe? Anyone do this?)
• Education -- this was by far the most fun to sort out. Yes, we have our college transcripts, which are at times comforting and at times troubling, but a few years ago my mother gave me a stack of items she'd saved from my childhood, including every single elementary school 4th quarter report card (my teachers like me!) and even my kindergarten entrance form, which indicates that at almost exactly five years old I weighed 38 pounds.
• Employment --track our raises, or lack thereof. Also keep up with important items for teachers, like having an up-to-date teaching license (details, details).
• Retirement -- If I keep going, I can retire in 2033 (though this will likely change). Booyah.
• Medical
• Dental
• Pregnancy -- I discovered that with so many doctor's appointments, I already have a lot of paperwork, and I know it will only expand. So I decided to separate out these documents from my regular medical files. Plus it gives me a place to house things like ultrasound pics (or the ultrasound DVD we got last month -- insane!) until I have a baby book or something or other that will house them more permanently. I guess there's only one red folder in this category.

Dogs -- all their medical records, county dog license registrations, obedience school certificates, etc. These guys wound up in a blue folder because that's what I had left, but it might also be fitting after Matt's recent comment that he hopes he can love our future child as much as he loves the dogs.

Green folders:

• Banking
• Taxes -- one folder each for this year's taxes, last year's taxes, and archived taxes. For some reason I hadn't been keeping a separate filing space for this year's taxes, and it was getting more complicated at tax time. This new system allows me to easily file away receipts and those little W2s and mortgage insurance statements when they arrive in the winter. This is one my "Duh" moments.
• Investments
• Current credit cards
• Old credit cards -- After a little snag five years back when we were getting credit reports in preparation for buying our house and I discovered that my name was affiliated with a card I didn't have, I've been keeping paperwork for the credit cards we close so that when the next big purchase comes up I'll have all the evidence easily accessible.
• Car/home insurance
• Car titles
• Car maintenance records

Now, on to the Receipts and Manuals section. This one was easier to arrange, thanks to the work I did a year and a half ago during a tremendous amount of snow. Using the leftover red and blue folders, here's what I came up with:

I arranged these folders based on frequency of use. The categories are as follows:

• Home services -- All the receipts for home repairs and routine maintenance.
• Home improvement -- Because some of this we've done ourselves, like the kitchen backsplash, and some of this we've relied on professionals to do the job, this is a mixture of materials receipts, design booklets, building plans and the like. I don't think this is something you hand over to the new home's owners, but it is a nice record of all the work we've done ourselves or had done by others.
• Kitchen large appliances
• Kitchen small appliances
• Appliances -- other -- I've noticed that most appliances are in the kitchen, but there are a few, like the Dyson and the washer and dryer, that needed to fit into a separate category. And thank goodness for that Dyson info we saved, since we were able to cash in on the most fortuitous and generous Craigslist warranty repair in history. Thank you, sweet man!
• Electronics
• Furniture and home accessories
• Clothes -- I only save receipts for big-ticket purchases, but after returning a pair of designer jeans to Nordstrom and getting a full refund I can assure you I will always save my Nordstrom receipts.
• Outdoor
• Tools

So the closet switch and new filing system are complete in one fell swoop! But let's chat for a second about safes. Should we have one? (Probably.) Do you have one? Anyone have an inexpensive, small one they'd recommend to save a few precious items in case of a fire or other disaster?

The closet shuffle, take 1

Doesn't it seem like every home-owning-young-couple-about-to-have-a-baby converts their office into the nursery? Add us to the list. Our office is the smallest of the three bedrooms in our house, but it has the second-biggest closet (right behind the master bedroom closet), which means plenty of storage, so we (crossing fingers) shouldn't need too much more storage than the to-be-refinished dresser we bought over the weekend.

While I made no serious effort to decorate (or even paint) the office in the past four and a half years, knowing (and then eventually hoping) it would one day be the nursery, our office closet has been fully utilized the whole time we've lived here. As some preliminary nursery preparation, I took advantage of some of my travel-free and work-free time this week to start shuffling the items from the office closet to the smaller guestroom closet. Here's our starting point:

Bigger office closet (soon-to-be nursery closet):

Smaller guestroom closet:

The office closet housed photo albums, files, over-flow books that don't fit into our two bookcases, craft supplies, a container of gift wrap, a container of gift bags, my wedding dress, some sentimental items and a few miscellaneous items. The guestroom closet housed some dog supplies, some busted pillows the dogs have semi-destroyed over the years (that I may or not ever learn how to fix), board games, Matt's guitar, and two containers of my school files that I organized last summer and that temporarily are hanging out in there this summer until September. 

I needed to find a way to get the contents of the office closet mostly contained within the smaller guestroom closet. This involved first sifting through all the contents of the office closet, which was kind of fun seeing as a lot of the items in there contain a lot of memories. I love finding old letters from long-time friends writing about their then-boyfriends now-husbands, or the funniest find so far: a postcard Matt sent me in 2001 when he was studying aboard in Spain, approximately two years before we started dating. Turns out I had a lot of loose letters and cards like that in several containers throughout the closet, so I consolidated and filed them in my special container for all-time-favorite cards.

Once virtually everything was consolidated and quite a few items were thrown out, it was time to start moving. The container of gift bags and the box containing my wedding dress fit nicely under the queen bed in the guestroom, and I figure our future guests won't be needing under-the-bed storage, so I stowed those items away to free up some space in the guestroom closet. I also found a couple items that make more sense housed in the garage, such as sporting goods, and a couple household items, such as tealight and votive candles, that make make more sense housed in the linen closet with other similar home equipment. Other than that, though, I needed to get everything else into the guestroom closet.

Although this is still a work in progress, here's the end result after about six hours of work spread over the course of two days:

Current office closet:

This photo emphasizes the improperly installed shelf on the left-hand side that we'll be fixing soon. I couldn't move everything quite yet as I still figure out some storage solutions for the closet shuffle, so here's what remains:

We've started to outgrow the accordion-file system I started to develop when we got married and then added to a year and a half ago. So, I'm currently on the lookout for an affordable two-drawer file cabinet (preferably made of wood) that could be housed at the bottom of the guestroom closet. Craigslist might be the best source for this, not surprisingly.

Also still hanging out in the office closet are these random items. I know I can easily fit most of this inside the guestroom closet, but I think it makes sense to get the file system squared away before attempting any further reorganizing. If you look closely, you'll notice that one of the items on the middle shelf is my Cabbage Patch Kids kindergarten backpack, which is the holding pen for my childhood keychain collection. Sentimental and unnecessary, right? Hmmmm...

Doc gives his seal of approval to the added floor space inside the office closet, a perfect dog hang out. (Note: This is Doc's happy face.) 

So here's the current state of the guestroom closet:

On closer inspection, you'll see this shelf of mostly Stephanie and Matt memorabilia...

...our stack of board games. We love Taboo! (and I am horrible at Trivial Pursuit)...

...a stack of books temporarily arranged vertically that represents my recent past, present, and future...

...and a consolidated and better-organized gift wrap container that also houses some empty poster tubes (and some occupied poster tubes that include, you know, my bachelor and Master's degrees, and the day's greatest find, my New Kids on the Block poster I bought in 1st grade. Congratulations to me for Hangin' Tough all these years.)

It's nice to have made a serious dent in this closet shuffle project at this time when I don't have much else going on. Although I originally wouldn't have planned it this way, it kind of works out perfectly that I'm spending my summer in my second trimester, when I have the time and the energy to get some preparations done.

How many plastic sheet protectors can a girl use?

The answer? A heck of a lot!

I know you must think that after I got my amazing label maker that I ascended to label-maker heaven, which explains why I would have been a little more quiet these days. But, as any teacher would know, I have been a little more quiet lately because I have been super swamped, anxiously anticipating the arrival of a fresh crop of students. Well, they arrived today, and about five minutes ago I finished a mondo organizational project that I've been meaning to complete since the last day of school.

That's right, I renewed my vows with plastic sheet protectors.

Now, I know what you might be thinking: plastic sheet protectors = bad for the environment. You're probably right. But when it comes to my teaching materials, I lean toward lamination and plastic rather than making new copies of everything I need year after year. There is no perfect system, but this is about as close as I can get.

And it makes me so happy, in my nerdy, organization-obsessed kind of way.

OK, so here's exactly what I did:

1) Last year, each time I left my classroom to make copies of my materials for my students, I kept a giant file folder for each of my classes. I labeled this folder "Originals" followed by the class name. I made sure the "Originals" stayed in the exact order in which I had distributed them to students. See, I had a plan...

2) I gathered up some free, giant three-ring binders I'd corralled from various sources.

3) I bought two 200-pack non-glare sheet protectors from Office Depot. These retail for about $14.50 in the store (more expensive online), but because I signed up my credit card through a link provided by our school's finance officer, I'm able to get school-system prices for all my Office Depot purchases. This means my $14.50 each sheet protectors came in at a whopping $4.44 each. This, my friends, is my teacher bonus (and you know how much I love teacher discounts!).


4) I tried to consolidate all my physical materials for each of my classes into two binders per class. One binder simply contains my "Originals" in more user-friendly, plastic-sheet-protected format. This is a great way for me -- a totally visual organizer -- to see exactly what I did each day last year, which is totally useful as I figure out this year. I added dividers for each of the four grading periods to remind myself of when I roughly covered each topic, skill or activity.

The second binder per class I've labeled "Supplemental Materials." This is where the plastic sheet protectors really did wonders. See, as an English and journalism teacher, every week I come across several items I gather and file away as "Stuff I Might Use Sometime." OK, that's not a real file name...it's more like that-pile-in-the-corner-of-my-office-that-has-good-stuff-but-I'm-not-quite-sure-what's-in-there. So, this "Supplemental Resources" notebook contains articles, supplemental activities I've made but had to cut out some years, examples of good student work to use as models for new students...you get the idea. This notebook is also divided into the four grading quarters of the school year, with a short table of contents for each quarter so I can quickly glance at my extra materials if I'm looking for ideas.

Obviously, I have electronic files of everything I've ever made as a teacher, and I have a good system for labeling all those electronic files. But, when faced with the daunting challenge of organizing 180 days of teaching three different types of higher-level classes, flipping through my plastic-sheet-ridden notebooks will surely make my life easier.
  
In fact, I would say this could down right revolutionize my teaching experience.

Tip 65: Naming electronic files

OMG people. I am loving my label maker. I went a little label-maker happy yesterday in my classroom, but it was much needed. I will explain more soon. In the meantime, speaking of labeling....If you have trouble naming your electronic files, you might consider this...

Tip 65: If you have files that you need to keep arranged methodically, name your files so they begin with a number (for example, 1--English syllabus, 2--First assignment).

Below you can see what part of my Beginning of the Year English folder looks like from my computer.

As a teacher, this system works great for me because I am constantly updating my files every year, making little changes, but often not reinventing the wheel. So, as I start off this school year, I can see the order in which I handed out materials last year. While the materials themselves might change over time, the skills I am building do not change, so I cannot, for example, teach my students how to read a passage closely before I teach them some basic literally devices. My literary devices file might be number 10 and my close reading instructions number 11.

Of course, you have to make computer file folders your friend. So, I have a folder on my computer for every unit I teach, and within that unit I number my files so I can keep track of what I should be teaching when.

And, like all my tips, this one can definitely be modified for the world outside teaching. Teaching just especially lends itself to this sort of organizational practice because we start fresh every September and need to look back on the previous year's work.

How do you organize your computer files?

Tip 35: Card organization #2

Oh joy! You got a card in the mail. Now what?

Tip 35: Keep cards on display for a week surrounding a big event, then either a) recycle the card b) prepare to use the card or c) file it away.

Let's break this down:

A) Recycle the card. This one is the easiest option. If the card doesn't contain much besides a signature and maybe a not-so-sentimental one or two liner, I usually recycle it. After a week on display, straight to the bin.

B) Prepare to reuse the card. If you like a card enough but don't necessarily need to hold on to it for sentimental reasons, cut off the front flap of the card, the part containing the cover art. Somewhere down the road you may glue a piece of cardstock to the back of this cover and write a nice message. Done! Until the day for reusing the card arrives, file it in your card file (see yesterday's post). I haven't yet reused a card myself, but I have received some from friends and thought it was a nice idea, so today I saved a couple wedding-card covers.

C) File it away. I am not a romantic person, but I am a hugely sentimental person. I know that may seem like a contradiction in terms, but it's really not. Yes, I cry every time a bride walks down the aisle, whether in person or on TV, and I will cry at some movies sometimes, but I'm a pretty even-keel person. But I love preserving memories. And I love getting an amazing card.

So, my hall-of-fame cards make it to my DIY card file. This is not to be confused with my other card file, the one where I keep all my cards-in-waiting of their big debut in someone else's mailbox. Instead these are the cards that compose my make-shift adult yearbook. (Don't you miss yearbooks and writing in them and getting a yearly affirmation as you and all your friends exchange feelings?)

Here is what my card file looks like. The box is something my mother gave me when I was in high school.

The dividers I made myself using pretty card stock paper and my favorite Post-It Durable tabs that I am starting to use everywhere.

The tabs read:

• Holidays
• Special feelings -- Translation: cards where friends and family say incredibly nice things about your relationships. The name comes from what my best friends from high school say when we're about to get emotional.
• Our wedding -- I meant to make a scrapbook of wedding stuff, but this is good enough, and our wedding was three and a half years ago, so that's never gonna happened. With this, special feelings are within reach.
• Love letters -- I have kept every note Matt and I have written each other. There were a lot in the beginning of our relationship. The ones of the present are short and sweet, I like to think because the longer you're with someone the harder it becomes to define why you love each other. It just is. This year for Valentine's Day I made seven little paper hearts with goofy messages on them and hid them all around the house so Matt would find them during his daily routine (on the remote control, on the [lactose-free] milk carton, inside his shower). Somehow this seems more apt than the longer letters of yesteryear.
• Invites/programs -- Yes, I am that person who saves invitations to your wedding. Maybe it will come in handy for you someday. I also saved your wedding program. I love these things. Maybe one day when I start a stationery business these will be useful.

I also keep every card a student writes to me, but those I keep at school in a special folder devoted to happy teacher items, like awards, kind words, my published teacher writings, etc.

Why do I keep cards? For those crappy days when I don't have much energy, or for those times I'm just cleaning out the house and get nostalgic. And because I find gems like this: a wedding card from my friend who wrote, "May you two build a beautiful world in each other." It made me cry today.

Ok, I promise to be way more practical and less sentimental in my next posts.

Next up...bonus green product post!

Tip 34: Card organization #1

It's day four of mail week, and so far we've looked at how to get rid of mail (shred and recycle!), how to cut down junkmail (lots of helpful Web sites!) and how to manage bills (use e-bill and online bill pay). But none of those are very fun. You know what is fun? Actual mail. You can be a part of sending actual mail in the actual mail...

Tip 34: Use (buy or create) a greeting card organizer with dividers so you can easily store cards for special occasions.

My greeting card organizer was actually an unintentional purchase. It's from Costco, and it came filled with cards pre-sorted in various categories. I can't remember if I bought this or if Matt's parents bought this for us (a likely scenario), but I used up the cards long ago and kept the box as a helpful organizational tool.

Here it is from the outside. It's about the width of two side-by-side shoe boxes. (Side note: I love the way it closes: there are magnets on the front flap and right inside the box that make a satisfying "snap" when you close it.)

Open it up, and find these nifty dividers.

 

  

Here are the divider categories, in case you can't read them all:

• Gift enclosure cards
• Birthday
• New baby
• Get well
• Sympathy
• Thank you
• Wedding/love
• Friendship/blank

I have a couple cards in each section. I'll go to a Hallmark store maybe twice a year and stock up on cards. There have been a lot of wedding cards in the last four or five years, and now the trend is baby cards (pattern, anyone?). I try to get cards with certain people in mind so that I can avoid generic or boring cards as much as possible. I file them away in here to save for the wedding, shower, anniversary, birthday or baby's arrival.

How do I remember your birthday? I put it into my Google calendar, and I made it an event that reoccurs annually so I'll never forget!

In the front of second half of the box I have a bunch of blank cards and stationery, which are great for quick notes. While the vast majority of everyday communication with my friends takes place electronically, and I know a lot of people send e-cards or even just e-mails to celebrate events (and I do that, too) I still like to send my long-distance friends some occasional mail love. Doesn't getting a card in the mail make your day?

I've also increasingly gotten into making cards. If you've been following this blog for a while, you might recall that as a child I teamed up with some pool friends to create a "Beaded Apparel" company, where we would sew beads onto shirts. Well, I also ran a company called "Everything Cards, Etc." where my neighbor frenemy (not you, Rene) and I would make cards in her grandparents' basement and sell them from a table on the side of our street. Kind of like an alternative to the lemonade stand. As silly as it was, I kind of missed making cards. So, I started it up again. Now my main supply for my greeting card box is some envelopes I bought at Michael's and some cardstock paper.

If you want to make a box like this yourself, take an over-sized shoe box, take some cardstock paper to serve as dividers, and go to town. I would not have purchased this if I didn't inadvertently own it already.

Next up...you got a card in the mail. Now what?

Tip 33: Reduce your bill (mail)

First of all, I realize this is the latest I have ever blogged in the day (and I bet some of you were thinking, "Maybe today will be the day she breaks her blogging streak!"). Well folks, this post is primarily late because I just got home from my monthly book club (yes, I am a huge proponent of organized activities, obviously, and I will blog about its evolution later).

I wish I could tell you how to reduce the number of bills you receive in a month and how to reduce the amount you owe each month, but the only thing I can say is ask for special deals, especially any perks you may get through your employer, and/or threaten to switch to a different service (we're mostly talking about TV, cell phones, Internet...good luck negotiating with the power companies, though I am sure someone succeeds here). At most, though, this knocks $10 or maybe $15, $20 off your monthly bills, but not enough to retire at 35 (my dream). What I can say, though, is that if you haven't already....

Tip 33: To further reduce the amount of paper that comes into your house, your need for shredding and recycling, and to reduce your chances of a late payment, conduct all of your bill pay online.

Up until a year ago I was still holding on to doing some of my bill pay through snail mail, namely for our mortgage. I don't know why I stuck to this. I think it was partially because I didn't trust online bill pay for everything (but still did for most things), and partially because our mortgage company would charge an incredibly high fee for every mortgage paid through their site. It made no sense. Then Matt said, "Why don't you use our bank's Web site for online bill pay?" Why didn't I think of that? Setting it up takes about two minutes, and the payoff (in time) is huge.

Here's how our monthly bills work:

1) As teachers we get paid once a month, on the last work day of the month. Some of my non-teacher friends think this is outrageous and don't know how we cope. The answer is, it's very easy: your bills are due once a month.

2) I manage all the daily household finances. Matt knows way more than me about the stock market and the intricacies of loans, so I let him handle that, but I'm more type A and never miss a payment, so this is my strength.

3) The only paper bills we receive in the mail each month are: 1) mortgage statements, which I file into a special binder only for mortgage documents and 2) the water bill, which we get once every three months and the company will not do e-bill. I love e-bill. I try only to keep one copy of the most recent water bill on file and shred the rest.

4) We pay the following bills through these means each month:

• The mortgage is due the start of each month, so that's set up through online bill pay. I don't do automatic pay for this because it's such a huge amount and I want to see it go through (though I realize I could set up automatic pay).
• The credit card #1 is paid online through the card's site at the start of each month. I do this manually. Also, we charge almost all of our everyday expenses mostly to keep track of all purchases and our budget, but we pay the card off in full every month (and we save a lot of money each month, too).
• Homeowner's association dues are automatic bill pay at the start of each month.
• Auto and home insurance (one charge) is automatic bill pay at the start of each month.
• Electricity is automatic bill pay at the middle of each month.
• Gas is something I pay manually through the company's site at the middle of each month.
• TV/Internet/cell phone (one charge) is automatic bill pay at the end of each month.
• Water is every three months, and I pay this manually through bill pay.
• Credit card #2 has occasional small charges, so we pay that off through the company's site as needed.

5) For the smaller items that are not set up for automatic bill pay (gas, credit card #2, water) I pay those bills as soon as I receive the e-bill email notification. For the larger items that are not set up for automatic bill pay (mortgage, credit card #1), I pay those bills at the end of each month on pay day. It's fun to have (what seems like) a lot of money in our account for about 8 hours.

It may seem like a lot to manage, but it's actually not. Here's my formula: I see a lot of money in my bank account = sign it's time to hand some money over. I get an email notification = time to pay a smaller bill. Everything else is taken care of for me. If you're a control freak like me and you're worried your automatic bill pay won't go through on time, never fear: it is more reliable than you are.

Lastly, just the other day I experienced one of the negative side effects of having paper bills laying around. Because we always get paper copies of the water bill in the mail, and this month was water month, I was looking at this month's bill the other day and thought I had not paid it. Then I realized if I had not paid it, it was overdue. Then I logged onto bill pay and realized that I had, of course, paid it the day it arrived in the mail, but my heart raced a tiny bit when I thought I would have to pay a $3.50 late fee and tarnish my perfect record.

Even though junkmail and bills are yucky, there are some better sides to mail, too. Let's start looking at some of those tomorrow!

Tip 4: Coupon organization

My Sunday morning ritual, likely held by countless others, involves clipping coupons from the newspaper circulars. Until about a year ago, I would clip, but then never actually use the coupons, until I discovered to...

Tip 4: Use a coupon file

I found my little wonder-worker at Target. I can't seem to find it anymore online, but this one from The Container Store is a similar idea (and it's an awesome store!).

Keep your file with you whenever you go to a store (I just always have mine in my purse), and remember to include coupons you get in the mail along with online coupons. The trick to staying organized is to immediately put any coupons you receive into your file. Don't forget to purge your file at least every month or two.

Find a system that works for you. Here's how I've organized mine:

• Wegmans -- for the grocery store I love and their occasional coupons I get in the mail
• Personal care -- for toiletries, make-up, medicine, first-aid
• House care -- for cleaning products, batteries, Ziploc items
• Grocery -- for any food items
• Stores -- for shops that frequently send me coupons, such as World Market, Ulta, Hallmark, CVS, Michaels
• Clothes -- for any clothing store, particularly Ann Taylor Loft and their bazillion coupons, or those receipts from stores like Banana Republic where you complete an online survey to get 20% off your next purchase
• Restaurants -- these mostly tend to be from take-out places, such as Baja Fresh, or the occasional coffee shop, such as Caribou
• Car -- for all those oil change and inspection coupons from Mr. Tire
• Dogs -- for food and treats

 As a bonus, my file has a front pocket where I store gift cards and discount program cards, and it contains a zipper pouch where I file receipts I may need later (as a teacher, I keep all receipts from my personal classroom purchases).

Next up...planning a weekly dinner menu!