thinning out april

As a nod toward Tax Day, let's thin out our home offices in April!  For some this may be an entire room or closet, for others it may be a small stash of school supplies.  Shoot, if you're like me you have tiny home offices (stacks of paper) ALL over your house! Regardless, pick a starting point, such as a drawer or folder, and sit down and go through it.  When you have another free minute, move onto the next bulletin board or supply bin.

This is what I found in my purge fest: used spirals, empty folders, old stamps, a TON of dried out pens and markers, paper clips everywhere, instruction manuals, business cards, old bills, and ticket stubs and other memorabilia.

Here's what I did:

Spirals-has anyone ever used an entire spiral anyway?  I mean every single page?  I NEVER have!  By the time I am half way through, it's usually bent and torn up that I'm craving a new crisp one:)  Anyway, this time I gave those old notebooks a clean sweep and torn out all the pages that were used and recycled those leaving me some thin spirals that I'm sure M will love to scribble on in the future.

Empty Folders-I plan on donating these, although I did use a folder to keep all our tax documents together this year.  Maybe I'll put these in the school supply box for future use.

Stamps-Our entry way table has four drawers where I keep envelopes, stamps, a letter opener, and our return address stamper thing.  I found a bunch of old stamps from our wedding (4 years old almost!).  Next time I am at the post office I plan on buying some 2 cent stamps so I can still use those bad boys.

Dried out markers and pens-I tossed them but made a list of colors that I need to replace.  It is a major pet peeve of mine to be in the middle of a craft and need a color that I don't have!

Paper Clips-I rallied them all up and put them in my magnetic paper clip cup in my desk drawer.  Hey Shallan, remember that time you ordered 1000 paper clips at KAMU?  Elizabeth and John are still using them today:) I always think of you when I grab a paperclip.

Instruction Manuals-When we bought our house, the previous owners left every single manual for us.  How sweet right?  Except for the fact that they were manual HOARDERS!  I mean we have manuals for blinds, for the AC, for ever appliance down to the garage door opener. So I went through them ALL and tossed the ones that were useless in keeping while the other ones I filed in an accordion file.

Business Cards-Joe and I each have a business card file but we just get lazy so I filed them all in our folders where they belong...we are getting pretty close to needing a Rolodex.

Ticket Stubs and Memorabilia-So this year I made Joe and I yearbooks for 2011 and 2012 and I took all the tickets stubs, programs, maps, etc and placed them in an envelope glued to the inside cover of each book.  I plan to do the same for 2013 so for now, that stuff is in a file folder waiting for it's turn.

So now what do you do with all that paper?  Shred the important information such as family numbers and addresses. I personally like this handy dandy stamp that blacks out your name and address.  All the other stuff, throw it in a  recycling bin.  For extra supplies you found such as half used spirals or a tin of broken crayons, donate them to a local school, teacher friend, or your church's Sunday school program.

What crazy stuff did you find this month?