Friday, May 8, 2015

Best way to store receipts


Yes, I believe in monsters. I used to have a receipt monster that haunted me, and I went through a couple of different systems (if you could call them that) which didn't work until I finally found one that wrangled my receipt monster!

First, let me clarify: I only keep receipts in case I need to return something later. In my opinion, there's not really any point to keeping receipts for things I'll never return, like groceries, produce, gas, etc. For important purchases of big-ticket items (appliances, electronics, etc.), I attach the receipt to the product manual, warranty info, etc. all together in the filing cabinet. (More on that in a future post, perhaps.)

So, here's what I had tried in the past...
Shoebox: yeah right. Let's not even go there.
A single receipt file in a filing cabinet: receipts fell out all the time, were hard to find when I needed them again, and just got too disorderly. They also just accumulated forever until the next time I moved homes, when I'd just toss out all the contents of the file.

Then I got this mini expanding file folder from the Container Store a few years ago, and I love it! The new system is:
  • File the receipt away in the month that you made the purchase.
  • At the beginning of every month, flip through that month's receipts from the previous year, and toss them out.
It's easy enough that the hubby happily complies! No more random receipts lying around the house. If you're not near a Container Store, here's a similar (dare I say cuter) one from amazon:

That's all for today, folks! Starting the 2 week countdown today until my last day as a grad student. The little monsters will be happy to have me home all day every day when I take a break after that, but for now they're doing a lot of this:


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