Day 294 - Office Papers & Tax Return

I finally got a huge stack of papers sorted last night.  I kept about 1/3 to be filed including special things the kids made, business receipts, & mortgage paperwork.  I got rid of a whole bunch of other stuff including a huge amount paperwork from the birth of DD#4 over two years ago, non-business receipts, and other bits and pieces.

I also finally found my 2011 tax return!  A few weeks ago it occurred to me that I hadn't deducted sales tax on a car purchase in 2011.  It was a used car so the sales tax isn't high, but finding the return helped me determine that amending it would net only $30.  Worth it?  Maybe.  We'll see if I find any more business receipts, charitable donation receipts, or mileage deductions for our rental property as I continue to wade through the piles.

Katie

Day 293 - Cell Phone & Kid stuff

I didn't get anything done in the office today.  I feel like I've done all the "easy" stuff and now the tedious sorting of paper lies ahead.

Instead I took a picture of more kid stuff.

1 to 6. Part of a Barbie fashion designer
7 to 9.  Markers
10. Art Project
11. Lice Comb
12. Pasta Fork
13. Pez of Tinkerbell's male friend
14. Old cell phone
15 to 17. Old cell chargers (all destined for charity in a postage-paid envelope)
18. Bag of Color Wonder markers
19. Frayed ribbon
20 to 22. Stretched out hair things.
23. broken Kaa figure from Jungle Book
24 to 26.  Pencil tips for one of those "push through" pencils.

Katie

Day 292 - Scrapbooking & Photo Update

It's been a week since I started this office project.  So far, so good with my goal of doing at least a little bit each day.  The pile in the living room is definitely smaller, but there is still a discouraging amount of paper to sort.  I'm going to try and do more paper this week.

Today I also sorted through some scrapbooking stuff.  It isn't normally kept in the office but I had a scrapbooking day with a friend just before I started this project and all the scrapbooking supplies ended up added to that pile in the living room.  I also had another friend give me a sack of scrapbooking materials last week. 

We also are starting a project for our older kids at couples Bible study.   It includes decorating a notebook so we need scrapbook supplies.  I figured I might as well sort out some of my things while I sorted through my friend's to see what I could use.  I found lots of paper and lots of school embellishments, too.

Katie

Day 291 - Misc. Kid Stuff

Today I shifted some office supplies and brought a box up from our basement to find homes for its contents.

Of note were 7 reams of water damaged printer paper from our minor flood 3 years ago.  As it happened a whole case of printer paper was sitting on it's long side on the carpet in the basement office.  Due to its orientation every sheet of paper absorbed some water.  So we were looking at 5,000 sheets of paper with a wrinkly inch or two at the end.  We weren't about to let it go to waste so we slowly are using it for kids printables, coupons, directions, etc.  One year we even used it for the Christmas letter laughingly directing readers to the wrinkles at the bottom of the pages.

We still have over 3,500 sheets so I bet we'll use it again for Christmas letters.

We also got rid of huge box our new printer came in.  I'm not sure why it was still in our office unless it's because stuff just was piled on top of it?

I didn't find anything to get rid of out of the office today, so here's a different assortment of items.

1. Wand
2. Brush
3. Broken dress-up shield
4. Glitter hat
5 & 6. Fun cups but 2 are not enough when you have 4 kids
7. Candle I was burning to "use it up."  Why not just toss it?
8. Broken crown
9. Dried out glue
10. Lion/Griffin decoration
11 to 13. Broken chairs that went with a house we got rid of this summer
14. Broken beads
15. Random lego
16. Glitter glue
17. Parrot tailfeather
18. Shell necklace, broken
19. Bananas from Strawberry Shortcake kitchen
20 & 21. Big gems
22. fake flower
23. bracelet
24 & 25. Thomas Game Cards
26. something small and silver, I don't remember, but I can see it in the photo.

Katie


Katie

Day 290 - Calendars

I was busy sorting office supplies today and didn't find much to get rid of.  So I grabbed this huge calendar that I used several years ago for homeschool.  It's a bit hard to use just because of the rearranging numbers and the kids' attraction to sticky tack so we switched to regular old wall calendars.

I counted it as a full day do to all it's bits and pieces.  I remember paying major bucks to have this thing laminated and wonder if maybe that's why I kept it so long.  Oh well.  Maybe one of my homeschooling friends can use it.

Katie

Day 289 - Office Craft Supplies

Today I got more craft things sorted in the office and found more to part with. 

1 to 5. Huge manilla envelopes that are intended for passing around an office or a group of people.  Not sure where they came from or why I had them stuffed in a drawer.
6. Pink feather
7 & 8. Leather conditioner I only used my freshmen year of college when Mom insisted I needed it.  Since it's been hanging around for ten plus years I guess I can let it go.
9. Orange sticky dots
10. Sewing straight pins
11 to 16. Alphabet beads
17. String for beads
18 to 23. Fake flowers
24 & 25. Gunky cheap paintbrushes
26. Well-used watercolors

Katie

Day 288 - Kid Bits and Pieces

Today I didn't get anything new done on the office, but I did get all the bank statements organized which took about half hour between 10:30 and 11:00 pm.  Now I'm beat but I wanted to post so here are 26 kid items.

1. Plastic crown
2. Winnie the Pooh flashcard
3 & 4. Thomas UNO cards
5. UNO instructions
6. Lego train car, but not Duplo so our legos don't fit on it
7. Popped bath ball
8 & 9. Roll Around Balls
10. Gus from Cinderella
11. Marker Lid
12. Stem of a kid fake microphone
13. Scrooge McDuck
14. Belle
15. Butterfly
16 & 17. Crayon twistables, broken
18. Keychain whistle I confiscated
19. Glittery something
20. Gargoyle from Hunchback of Notre Dame
21. Jack Sparrow
22. Paper dog from Strawberry Shortcake
23. Broken hair thing
24. Dora friend - colorform
25. Teeny pencil lead - I didn't even know we had one of these pencils
26. A round plastic disc of unknown origin

Katie