Goals for August!

I cannot believe we are a week into August already. I have set some goals for myself for August and they are well underway. I am hoping to have these done by the end of August, which won't be all that easy considering that we are on vacation up at the lake for a week and I am traveling for work for a week, but I am going to do my best to get these accomplished.

We moved into our house two years ago August 3rd, but we are still unpacking boxes, needing to get organized and realistically, we have too much STUFF in this house for two people. I have been working on purging and getting rid of things as well as getting things organized. I know I need to start with one room at a time so that it doesn't get overwhelming, so I am starting on my office.

The first thing we decided to do was to go through all of our CD's, load them onto my laptop and load them into both the apple and the amazon clouds. THEN, the next step is to get RID of all of the CD's. This will free up a whole shelf in our closet downstairs.

Another thing I have been working on is unsubscribing from email lists I am no longer interested in. Every morning I wake up and I have at least 100 new emails in my personal inbox. That is too much. I have three different email addresses, two that are combined, one that I have not checked in YEARS. I am slowly but surely working on getting that inbox cleaned up, my goal is to wake up to less than 25 emails a day and get it down to just four or five at the end of the day.

I use Microsoft Outlook to read and organize my gmail. I have folders set up for different types of emails that I get every day to help keep me organized. Sometimes I don't even read some of them, but just put them in the appropriate folder. One of the rules I have read about in regards to inbox organization is to follow the four D's. Do it, Delete it, Delegate it and Defer it. I am going to continue to try to follow these rules and get through my whole inbox. I would love to only check email three times a day instead of living in my inbox!

I am also working on getting a lot of filing done of miscellaneous papers as well as papers that just need to be filed. I bought a box a while back and then fitted it with the metal thingy for hanging file folders, now I just need to get it organized. I have my label maker, and pretty file folders, hoping to have this done by the end of the month.

The last thing that I am working on getting organized are all of my magazines. I love looking at pretty pictures, getting inspiration from them and saving them for future reference. I was inspired after reading Centsational Girls post on how she got her loose pages organized and thought it was a great idea.

This is how hers turned out, I love it, I am working on getting through my magazines, I have done a pretty good job, but I also know realistically, I have a long ways to go!

I am hoping to take this last organizing project with me on vacation, it might be a good thing to do with a glass of wine and some mind numbing tv!