My friends say that if they want to give me a gift I will truly love, they will gift wrap a new binder. They know that I nearly swoon in ecstasy at the smell of opening a new box of sheet covers to use with that binder. Add to that the rush of discovering a new type of section divider. Yes, I love my organizational tools.
OneNote, the Office version of a binder, also gives me thrills because I can attach my files, create subsections, and color code while having plenty of room to brainstorm. I don’t have the sensory thrill of hearing and smelling a binder in creation, but I can attach my spreadsheets, which offer an entirely different thrill; filters and sorts in Excel offer their own excitement.
The key to effectively organizing a binder isn’t to simply put it together in an easy to retrieve manner. It’s to use what’s in the binder in the most effective manner possible.
Once upon a bad time in our business and family lives, I filled our home with those binders. Our home and business burned, and it was my job to organize the claim. My file bucket, binders, and database were my best friends for the three years I worked through not only our rebuilding but our replacement of what we owned and submission of our insurance claim.
As the mother of teens in college search and scholarship mode, I filled binders full of my children’s information. Those binders include their best school work, their 4-H achievement records, and more. It’s easier to apply for scholarships with good documentation of past activities and achievements.
Those binders helped my daughter and me last year as she applied to several colleges and completed at least 73 scholarship applications. We were fortunate, and her hard work paid off – with a little help from organized binders.
So I guess you could say I worked to fit my daughter into binders. And I would do it again in a heartbeat.
Next year, I will again begin the scholarship and college quest with my son.
I’m perfectly fine with the fact that binders are the current scapegoat for jokes. Keep it up. If the day comes that you get tired of joking about fitting people into binders, I have a suggestion:
Go after checklists. Surely there are jokes to make about them too.
While some laugh at my tools, I’ll keep building my binders and savoring the rustle of sheet covers when a binder is compiled, completed, and put to good use.
