The Fantastical, Amazing Tickler File

This, my friends, is my 1-31 Tickler File. I love my Tickler File. It keeps me sane. When I use this thing faithfully, I don't lose bills, important time-sensitive papers, reminder notes, you name it, it keeps my ducks in a row.

As you can see, it has 31 slots with the numbers 1-31. These numbers represent each day of any given month. If I have to remember to send money to school for pictures, lunches, field trips, whatever, I just stick it in the appropriate date slot and then I don't forget. If I need to mail a bill on the 10th of the month, I stick it in the 10 slot. If I need to remind myself to do something, especially something that will recur again and again, like sending lunch money to school or clean the litterbox, I write it on an index card and file it in the appropriate spot. I know this sounds pretty anal and, I agree, it is, but once I can write something down and file it away, I can purge it from my brain and it makes me less scatterbrained.

I found my 1-31 Tickler File at Target, but if you can't find one, you might try looking at the thrift store. Organizing junkies are always changing their systems and purging what doesn't work. In fact, I have put this system away a few times when I was trying to free up space on the top of my desk, but each time I did that I found that I couldn't live without it.

This is my Monthly Tickler file. This is where I unload things I'm procrastinating on making decisions about and things that occur on a yearly (or more often) basis. For example, in each month I have an index card with birthdays for the people I want to remember to send a card and/or present to. This releases me from writing all those dates on the calendar every January.

At the beginning of each month, I pull out that month's Monthly Tickler File and file its contents in my 1-31 desktop file thingie in the appropriate slots. I also put yearly reminders in these files to schedule things like vet appointments, my family's dentist appointments, etc. The possibilities are endless. If I need to remind myself about something that won't fit in the file, I write it on an index card with a note reminding me where I put the too big thing. Whatever I can do to free up valuable brain space, I'm on it.