This is just a quick post about something that has been SO helpful and beneficial for our family. With most electronic, baby, or appliance type products you get a manual and or a warranty card. We used to house ALL of the manuals and warranties we had loose in a drawer of the dresser that holds our DVD's. It was never organized and I could never find anything in there. I honestly had no idea what to do with them until I found this pin on Pinterest...
That pin links to a blog post that describes the BEST way to organize all that stuff which you can find here!
This idea to put all the manuals in clear page protectors in a 3 ring binder is genius! All you need is a BIG 3" binder (if you have a ton of manuals for things like we did), a bunch of page protectors, a set of tabbed dividers, and time. It took me about an hour to sit down and organize all of the manuals with their matching warranties. Then I took an extra step and got all the receipts from our filing cabinet and matched them to their manual/warranty. I originally kept all the receipts separate in a file in the metal filing cabinet organized by store that we had a credit card for like Lowe's and the ones that didn't come from a specific store just got tossed into the drawer with everything else.
Once everything was in a bunch of individual piles, I put each pile into a clear page protector. From there, I put those "packets" into piles by the categories I had decided would work for us in the binder. In our binder, we have the following categories:
Then I wrote the category names on the tabs of the dividers and put everything into the binder. It's really that simple, but it is amazingly perfect for it's purpose. I also added a cover sheet for our binder so if my husband needed to find something, he knew exactly where to go.
You can download the cover sheet for free HERE!
Since I have created this (about 2 years ago), I have needed to find the warranty information for 2 items and needed to find numerous manuals. Instead of having to dig through mounds of paperwork, it took me all of 30 seconds to open the notebook and find the paperwork I needed. I even been able to find something while on the phone with the company! Now go, make one, you can thank me later!
I hope you've enjoyed this organizational adventure and as always, thanks for stopping by!
~Ashley Berry
This idea to put all the manuals in clear page protectors in a 3 ring binder is genius! All you need is a BIG 3" binder (if you have a ton of manuals for things like we did), a bunch of page protectors, a set of tabbed dividers, and time. It took me about an hour to sit down and organize all of the manuals with their matching warranties. Then I took an extra step and got all the receipts from our filing cabinet and matched them to their manual/warranty. I originally kept all the receipts separate in a file in the metal filing cabinet organized by store that we had a credit card for like Lowe's and the ones that didn't come from a specific store just got tossed into the drawer with everything else.
Once everything was in a bunch of individual piles, I put each pile into a clear page protector. From there, I put those "packets" into piles by the categories I had decided would work for us in the binder. In our binder, we have the following categories:
- Kitchen
- Baby
- Living Room/Office
- Garage
- Random (this includes things like the vacuum, clock radio, and large room fan)
Then I wrote the category names on the tabs of the dividers and put everything into the binder. It's really that simple, but it is amazingly perfect for it's purpose. I also added a cover sheet for our binder so if my husband needed to find something, he knew exactly where to go.
You can download the cover sheet for free HERE!
Since I have created this (about 2 years ago), I have needed to find the warranty information for 2 items and needed to find numerous manuals. Instead of having to dig through mounds of paperwork, it took me all of 30 seconds to open the notebook and find the paperwork I needed. I even been able to find something while on the phone with the company! Now go, make one, you can thank me later!
I hope you've enjoyed this organizational adventure and as always, thanks for stopping by!
~Ashley Berry
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