Getting Our Life Admin On Track: Day 1/4, Reset #2

Getting Your Life Sorted for 2019 ☀️Reset Your Life Challenge

Today is the first day of the second challenge of Muchelle B.'s Mini Life Reset. Days 1-4 were focused on decluttering, cleaning, and resetting my space. (You can read those posts here, here, and here!)

Challenge number two is Life Administration!

This excites me like no other!!

Here, take a 11 minutes and 37 seconds and watch Muichelle B.'s vlog post regarding Life Admin. 

If you are not already living in this Bullet Journal- 5am wake-up- how to do.all.the.things. -lifestyle vernacular, then here are a few expressions you may encounter which you may not understand going into this. Here is the first: 

Brain Dump- when you drop it all out and put it somewhere. 

All the thoughts. 

In a legit space (notebook, calendar, etc.) 

Nothing is too far gone. 

That pending eye doctor appointment you keep neglecting to make

...that random box of books still sitting in your living room (!)

... that movie you have been meaning to watch

Write it all down. 

Ask yourself, "What have I been procrastinating?". 
Think about what you are doing with your life. 
Start working on your list, one-by-one. 
Concentrate on getting something done. 
Understand that you won't likely get it all done. That's ok. 
This will be ongoing.

*TIP I: Knock one of those items you DREAD off of your list...do it to the best of your ability today. Make it happen. You will breathe so much better afterwards. Eat The Frog.

As Mark Twain once said “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”

The frog is that one thing you have on your to-do list that you have absolutely no motivation to do and that you’re most likely to procrastinate on. Eating the frog means to just do it, otherwise the frog will eat you meaning that you’ll end up procrastinating it the whole day.
Once that one task is done, the rest of the day will be an easier ride and you will get both momentum and a sense of accomplishment at the beginning of your day.

-SOURCE

*TIP II: Knock out a handful of small, doable items which take up mental space and space on your list and just need to a little momentum (TODAY) to be crossed-off. You will feel SO GOOD about all the crossed-out items. (BONUS: Add a few items which you can do now/check now: make a list (check), do ONE BIG THING (check), pour yourself a glass of water (check). Sometimes all you need is to see the ball rolling and the motivation comes in downpours!
   

"Be intentional and take care of your life admin tasks."- Muchelle 

 *****
I typed out my list and sorted it into piles of:
*paperwork/bills/sorting
*events/dates/appointments
*clean/organize
*other

Today's goal is to work off that first asterisk: paperwork/bills/sorting

Here is what that looks like for me: 

*address book

*bills

*file old bills

*storage for all the papers
*bank, budget, auto pay, combine bills to one source

Here are some photos/proof of what happened today.

This colorfully striped address book has been mine since before Big Strong Man and I were married- almost a decade ago! (whoot!) Thing is, after all that time, people move, some people are no longer those you need to have an address for (hello, old crush-yikes!), and there are a LOT of items crossed off. It gets ugly ya'll. 

 So, when I couldn't find an address book I liked at the local stores, or even online, I decided to make my own. That gorgeous, shiny light pink notebook? Yep, that's her. And those letter stickers? They are tools to divide the portions of the book by letters, like an address book. 

After adding the letters I decided that there needed to be a little something on the corners to help find pages a little easier. 

Then I added all the contacts, so there's that...

Then there was this huge file of paid bills. I had them in order alphabetically in this manilla folder and kept in an a drawer. Concise, right?  The thing is, I had no end-game for this. Was I just going to collect paid bills for all my life? How long are they necessary to keep, anyway? 

So I purchased some cobalt blue folders with the tabs on top. I labeled each by month.

This was the time consuming part: 

I sorted through ALL.THE.PAPERS. 

Everything that was from 2017 and earlier was pitched. 

All things 2018/2019 were filed in their monthly folder. 

My plan: Every month, new bills replace the previous year's. Nothing needs kept for 100 years. 

Everything is filed. All the papers on the right (does this even give it justice?? there were so many...) are to be destroyed. This filer is from Thirty-One. Yep, she's cute.  

Here is my final picture. Destroyed.

So, returning to my list for today, it has a little update and I hope you like it as much as I...

*address book

*bills

*file old bills

*storage for all the papers
*bank, budget, auto pay, combine bills to one source

I like that it isn't all crossed off. That would be way rad, but...
This is good. It's realistic. Honest.

I hope your day was as eventful.
*Share the love through pictures!