Monday, July 21, 2008

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.

4 comments:

  1. You are so organized, I just love it! I love to be organized also, but with the last baby I'm a complete mess! One day I'll get back to filing! Thanks for inspiring!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Awesome! I've always liked the idea of using one of those but hadn't heard one way or another if they were of any use... So question: Why do you have 2 of the same month in your monthly tickler file? I'm thinking of soon going through my desk & files and tackling all that that will require - I love the idea of the monthly tickler system!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. In response to Tic: First of all, thanks for stopping by my blog AND for the link love. To answer your question about the tickler file. There is really only one file per month. What you are seeing is my double labeling of the hanging file folder for the month and the file folder that is filed within it. I'm sorry about that. I didn't realize until you brought it up how confusing that might be.

    ReplyDelete
  4. i actually found one of these online yesterday

    http://www.innovations.com.au/Product_Detail.aspx?ParentCategoryID=163&CategoryID=100&ProductID=65536

    i haven't seen them for sale for years..

    thanks for the great tip.

    ReplyDelete