Sometimes, when it comes to ideas for organization or saving money, ideas are just that ideas. When you put them into play, they just sometimes don’t work out the way that you intend for them to. Such was the case recently for me.
I had this stellar idea to help organize all of our owners manuals for our electronics, toys, appliances – you name it! I thought that my idea would make it just so simple to find the booklets I needed when we had a question about our item. I spent money buying extra notebooks and plastic sleeves…….just to have it end up a colossal failure.
So, what did I try? Well, I thought that having a 3 ring binder with plastic sleeves and dividers would be a great way to organize my manuals. I figured notebooks on a shelf would make it so simple when I needed to refer to them. However, when I created my books, the plastic sleeves did not work. The books fell out of the top and were too heavy in many instance, to stay upright and not crease the plastic sleeves. Here is what I thought the book would look like:
It looks pretty – doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it did not work for me. However, it COULD work for you! It could be that we have far too many manuals to keep track of. It could be that the manuals we have are larger and heavy. If you decide to go ahead with this method to file your owner’s manuals, here are some divider sections that I had created for myself:
Camera
Cell Phone
Computer
Appliances
Furniture
Jewelry
Electronics
Video Games
Toys
Baby/Child Items
Since this did not work, I thought I’d share what actually does work for me. These are plastic boxes with hanging file folders in them. This is the method I’ve used for years and as the saying goes “if it ain’t broke – don’t fix it.” So, that is the method we returned to using and will continue to use from this point forward.
Between the labels on the folders and on the outside of the box – I can keep track of our manuals and still easily find them if they are needed. We keep them in the basement on a shelf, so we can easily reference them if we need to. This method works for us.
Am I disappointed I tried something new? Of course not! Failure is not only finding something doesn’t work – it is more often not even being willing to try something new. So don’t be afraid to give it a shot – you just will never know if something will work or if it won’t.