the one thing i hoard

Football made a change in me...it taught me to save receipts.  Before, I never held on to receipts, I was fine with store credit and all my bank information was online.  I did not want to have to keep a handle on all those little pieces of paper.

Then we moved to Seattle, and Texas, and Seattle and Texas and then Jacksonville and Texas while Joe was playing football.  We really lived by the seat of our pants and couldn't rely on being in one place for too long.  Enter anxiety about returning things without receipts!  The more we could return the less money we spent hauling it back home.

The success story really came in Jacksonville.  We rented a loft for about a month and bought things like a microwave, rugs, a TV, etc. and then plans changed and we were going back home.  I had kept all our receipts in a  tiny a little pile and boy did it save me some stress...and money!

Since then I've never looked back, well until recently when my receipt drawer wouldn't close.  I bought a small file folder in the Target dollar bin and went to work tossing old receipts (don't keep receipts for more than 6 months to a year) and then sorted them into like categories. 

I labeled the tabs in order of most often used:

Target

Home Depot/Lowe's

Hobby Lobby

Home (World Market, PB, BBB)

Furniture

Office (Office Max, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble)

Health and Beauty (places like Ulta, Bath and Body Works)

Sports (Academy)

Auto

Joe (Clothes and personal items)

Casey (Clothes and personal items)

After filing all my receipts, I thought the folder was a little boring so I simply glued a green button on the front...tiny I know, but it makes me smile every time I file a receipt:)

On Monday, a receipt saved me on a piece of furniture I bought back in MAY! I took it back and got full credit!  Woohoo! What do you do with your receipts??