My WORST Idea for Organizing Warranties

So far in my ongoing warranty series we’ve looked at…

• Organize Your Warranty Information – What You Should Keep
• File Drawer Storage for Warranty Information
• Envelope Storage for Warranty Information

Now I’m going to tell you the WORST idea for organizing warranties. It can work I suppose, but it never worked for me.

The folder system. 

Grab all that warranty info you need to save, and separate each into one thick page protector in a three ring notebook. I used this method for a while actually. It was years ago, and I had all these extra notebooks. However, for me it was a disaster method.

Pros:

• Easy and inexpensive – a folder costs less than a file cabinet.
• It’s highly mobile. I like that.

Cons:

• DO NOT accidentally drop your folder – information spews out the top of your page protectors and you then have a nice big mess to sort.
• You need a million notebooks. I don’t even buy that much stuff – really, and I had three fat notebooks, that could have been five probably. The reason – many instruction manuals are chunky.
• Speaking of instruction manuals, they slip and slide their way out of your plastic page protectors, even when you don’t drop the notebook.
• The notebooks do not store well. They bulk up so much that one side is of course extra fat and good luck fitting them nicely on a shelf.
• You have to buy special dividers. If you want to divide up your folder into sections, i.e. appliances, kitchen, what have you, you’ll have to find special extra wide tabbed dividers. These cost more and can be tough to find. Real dividers (even counting the tabs) are less wide than page protectors. If you’re dead set on this method I suggest buying these tabs instead, and tabbing the top.
• The pages are hard to turn because of the full to the brim page protectors.

I’m a big believer in three ring notebooks. I like them for many things, and think they’re a super duper organizing tool. That said, I count my warranty notebooks among one of my worst organizing ideas ever. It was not user friendly, and I don’t recommend it. I’d try something else first.