Lisa's Binders Part 1 I’m so excited to have introduced you to the paper organizing binders in the last couple of episodes, but not having the right products is only one part of why we’re not organized. The other reason we’re not organized is because the task of getting organized is overwhelming and is multi-layered. This is why I love the Sunday Basket® Workshops because they are not just for creating and doing your Sunday Basket®, it’s the first step in getting all of your papers organized. In the next couple of podcasts as I explain how I got all of our papers out of our filing cabinet and into binders, you’ll see how you could be doing this at workshops as well. There are so many other things you could do with your time when you’re at home other than an organizing program and that’s why the workshops really help you get these binders done. I was really super excited to put my own papers in my own albums, but I’ll just be honest with you, I didn’t even get started with the majority of the albums until spring break because I was overwhelmed. So if you guys are overwhelmed, don’t’ worry. I created the albums and I was overwhelmed with putting them together! My Binder Organizing Story In January when I got the samples of the binders, the first thing I did was make the school memories binder for mine and Greg’s school childhood paperwork. I already had that separated out and I probably completed the entire thing in a couple of hours. The School Memories Binder comes with some printables which I did not fill out and it comes with 100 sheet protectors. In the sheet protectors, I put our baby albums, our papers we kept from school, and a lot of colored stuff. It all fit in one binder so that binder was already done. My kids' medical binders were already completed. I view the medical binder as the caregiver binder, too. We have four people in our family... me, my husband, and our kids, Joey (18) and Abby (16). I have had binders for my kids since they were 4 and 5 years old since at the time we had a lot of school and medical issues going on. These binders have been in my kitchen for over a decade and, as we continually get new paperwork from school or medical visits, I just add them into the front pocket of the binder. Then every summer, I go through and reorganize that binder, check it out, and make sure everything I need is in there. Anything that’s outdated, I move out and into the basement to a supplemental binder. My Process The Medical Organizing Binders were the easiest ones for me to do and that is where I got started. I grabbed my two medical binders and the printables that went in there and I started to sort out my information into the kids' binders. The 2-inch size binder ended up being perfect for me in every single instance. I was so excited that it wasn’t too big or too small so the size of the binder is perfect. It’s funny, there’s very little medical information in my kids' medical binders. For the majority of us, unless you care for someone with an extreme medical condition, your medical binder is only going to have a little bit of medical information in it and then anything else you need in order to be the caregiver. I really want you to think about the medical binder as a caregiver binder. When I was making my binders, I had to stage it. I had to get the paperwork that needed to go in the binder I had to decide how I was going to divide it up based on the slash pockets I had to fill out the printables that come with the binders So far what I’ve done is divide all of our papers out of our filing cabinet into the proper binder and decided the best way for me to organize that information by binder. In the podcast episode, I explain in more detail how I organized the binders for my kids. In the next podcast episode, I’m going to talk to you about how I set up