Bill Binder organization phase 1

I have never been an organized person.  I love when things have a place, and as long as they do I can get them there.  My problem has always been...where?  Where do I put this stuff?  Where will it be easy to find and use?  Where will I find the time to do it?  Where is my coffee?  Sometimes I feel like God just speaks right to my heart.  He apparently knows that for me this is a big struggle and something that I would like to change in my life.  Living unorganized tends to make me feel like I am not honoring Him in that area.  So, the Lord says to my heart..."Heart, you need to do something".  I thought I just wanted to play around on Pinterest.  I somehow "stumbled" on some links for different binders.  I have tried to organize in this way before, but it always looks like such a mess.  It is not a very attractive thing to look at either. 

This is my current bill binder.  It doesn't really have a "home", it just goes where ever I laid it last.  Sometimes I pay the bills from the kitchen counter.  Sometimes it is from the dining room table.  Two goals then are to find the where for the bills, and the where for the binder.  I know that my bills are much more organized in my binder.  Getting them there is sometimes the problem.

  After coming home from a 3 month "vacation" this is what three grocery sacks of mail ended up as.  After throwing out all the accumulated junk mail, sales flyers, and "current resident" stuff, and taking everything out of its envelope and piling it up, it looks like this.  Sometimes it goes from this to a box.  That's it.  I just don't know what to do with it, so I shove it all in a box and pile it up with the other boxes of stuff I don't know what to do with.  I have been able to find things from years ago with my filing system.  I don't know how, but it seems to work.  It is very time consuming when you need to find that one receipt from 5 years ago saying that you did indeed pay off your last cell phone bill.  In an effort to make this look better and be easier to manage, I am going to organize my bill binder this week.  There is no time like the present.

Some things that I already keep in my Bill Binder were just made on Excel.  They aren't pretty, but they are functional for me.  Until I find something more that I like, I will continue to use them.

One of my most used sheets is this one.  It simply has the website, log in, and password for places that I pay online.  I am forever forgetting all those passwords and letter number combinations.  We also have a couple of companies that we have multiple accounts or log in information.  This helps me keep it straight a lot. I have memorized our bank log in, so it is not on here.  If someone where to get this information they would only be able to pay a bill.....I hope.  This is also handy if "something where to happen to me" then my husband could easily access this information.  It is incredibly hard to focus on this information from a hospital bed, when things need to be paid.

My next most used sheet is my account information sheet.  It is hard to see in this picture, but the labels are "Bills", "Due", "Amount", "Account Number", "Phone Number".  This information is handy to have if you need to call in to a company for any reason and also so that you can see when regular monthly bills are due.

The above and below sheets are available, but not used as much as I would like to.  It's my own fault.  The above is a sheet that I put with each set of bills in my binder.  If I were looking at my gas bills this sheet would be the first sheet I see.  It will list what date I paid the bill, the amount I paid, and any notes or confirmation information, if I were paying over the phone.  I also will list from what account or credit card it was paid.  This is for me to keep track at a glance, rather than flipping through a year of bills.

 This sheet I like to keep at the front of my binder.  It will show each month what bills were paid and when.  It lists the Company, Amount, and Confirmation information.  This will go behind each month's calendar sheet.  Keeping a calendar sheet at the front is a new idea that I will be starting.  Other than these sheets and my bills, 3 hole punched, and put into a three ring binder, I am lost.  I am going to attempt now the great feat of organization.  I will post a better looking binder....soon.....hopefully.  If I am not back in a week......send a search party.