From toasters to desk chairs, to your computer, cell phone, and juniors remote control car, life involves warranties and lots of them. Over the next few days, I’ll post about the different systems for warranty organization I’ve seen; they all differ, except for one thing, what you keep. No matter which storage option you end up liking best, you’ll need all of the following.

Keep the following for the life of the product:

• Purchase receipts
• Owners manual
• Model number
• Serial number
• The actual warranty  – even if it’s expired (more on this later).
• Any other company relevant info; say a card that lists their 1-800 number.

Toss:

Packaging – this is questionable. Some people suggest keeping all packaging for the life of the item. I’m not so sure that’s necessary. If you have a dedicated storage space for boxes then by all means save lots of boxes. Most of us though, will only end up with a messy pile of cardboard. Keep the packaging for a month or so, or at least until after you’ve used it a few times, just in case you have to take it back to the store. After that you still need the model and serial number which is sometimes located on the box, so before recycling it, cut out any info you’ll need.

Next up in this series: which warranties to keep, plus storage/organization solutions.

Post from: Blisstree

Organize Your Warranty Information – What You Should Keep

However, here’s the deal. When you blog people like to send you free stuff. That may sound great, but I don’t like getting free stuff. I think we’ve pretty well established that I don’t love a lot of extra stuff, and while I sometimes get handy items that I use, mostly I get stuff that I just turn around and give away in a contest or to a friend.

That said, I received a different sort of white board item last October. I did a review and liked it, but really, I didn’t think I’d be using it all that often. In fact, I almost gave it away. That would have sucked, because as it turns out, it may be the one and only item a company ever sent me that I use every single day. Every day, no joke.

What’s this wonder item:

It’s the Jot-It desktop writing board from cocoa. It’s not a typical white board. It’s desk friendly. It’s not desk friendly for me because I have a small desk. What I use it for is a to-do lists system. I keep it in the kitchen and write down groceries I need, phone numbers, tasks I don’t want to forget, and more.

Last October I wrote a super long review of the Jot-It at my Office blog. Since I’m not going to rewrite the review here, you can read it there. Just to get you tempted, here are some pictures:

I will say here, that this is a great green product that can save on paper use, and help to get you organized at the same time. Additionally, one of my cons, in my old review, was that pens were not offered at the cocoa online shop – I felt it would be useful to be able to pick up more from cocoa directly. Well, since then they have added pens to their online store. Cool beans that a company listens to consumers in my opinion.

I will also point out that I LOVE the pen that came with the Jot-It. I’m still using the original pen, and remember, I use this daily, and I got this in October. That’s one good pen.

In any case this is not some plain old white board item. You’ll really like it. You can use it in your kitchen, on your desk, at the office, or really anywhere. Read my old review – or simply visit cocoa’s website to learn more.

Post from: Blisstree

Another Dry Erase Board – Seriously?

In 2005, a company called Outsell, Inc., which is a research and advisory firm for the information industry, said that 5.4 billion hours are spent each year searching for information. They also found that in 2005 the average employee spent 11 hours per week searching for information, versus 8 hours in 2001. That’s a lot of wasted time!

Having a filing system that works will save you time, money and headaches down the road when you need that certain piece of paper from last year.

I didn’t want to squeeze all the information about creating a filing system into one post, so I am going to break it up into several parts. Today, we are just going to go over why most filing systems fail and people just give up on the idea.

Here are some common problems people face on a daily basis:

• You get a call from you boss asking for another copy of that document he sent you. You know for a fact that it is on your desk somewhere, or stacked over there on the top of the filing cabinet. You tell him you will send it right over and then you are in a state of panic looking for it.
• You are known in the work place or home as the person who always loses papers and you have hundreds of papers piled on your desk with sticky notes all over them.
• You have bags and bags of papers that need to be filed, but your filing cabinet is already stuffed and there is not an inch of room for new papers.
• One day you decided you were going to create a filing system, so you got busy and made 50 categories and now your system is so complicated you have given up.
• The DVD player you just bought is on the fritz and you can’t find the receipt or manual anywhere so that you can return it.
• Worst case scenario: The IRS comes a callin’. Ugh!

I am sure there are plenty more that we could add. Feel free to do so.

Here are some common situatuions that cause the paper filing problem:

• Lack of a plan.
• Inconvenient storage.
• Papers do not have an assigned place to be.
• Lack of time to file your papers.
• Filing papers is B-O-R-I-N-G!
• You are not educated on how to create a filing system. You tried the ABCD way and it just didn’t work.
• You’re assistant files your papers at work for you, bot not at your home. That’s your responsibility.
• You just don’t think filing is important.

If you are having difficulty with your filing system, define what the problem is first. After you have done that, you can then move on to creating one that works.

Next week we will talk about some of the basics like: arranging your office so that paper filing is easy, choosing the right filing equipment, and deciding how to categorize your files so that you actually know where everything goes.

Post from: Blisstree

Where’s My Desk Wednesday/A Filing System Part I