Get Oranized Month 2009 - Update Your Addresses

I don't know about you, but it takes us a while to read all our Christmas cards. On some days, I only have time to put them in our designated Christmas card basket. Other days I have time to read them.

After Christmas every year, we go through our Christmas cards and update our address list. Remember my Palm problems last month and how they assured me that my address list would not be erased when they transferred my data to my new smart phone? Well ...... my phone numbers stayed in tact, but the addresses disappeared. Since I had not been able to sync my Palm to either computer, I had no way to save my list. Ugh!

So my job will be a little harder this year. I do have a hard copy from years gone by, but it is sadly lacking. I think I'll make hard copies more often now!

The easiest way I have found to update our address list is to have my husband read me the addresses from the Christmas cards, and I check them against our list. Then I can just type and he can just read. I'll also add notes about our friends to help us remember what has been happening in their lives.

Have a cup of tea and enjoy visiting with your friends indirectly through their cards. We joke about the ones we receive that just have a signature - at least we know they're alive!

If you have a lot of Christmas cards to go through as we do, know what you can handle. If you break it up into small segments, you won't be as likely to put it off. I can handle anything for a short duration! So we might decide to tackle Christmas cards for 30 minutes and see how we feel - are we done or can we manage more?

Since my phone contains both my phone list and my address list, I'll update both lists at once. If your cell phone does not contain your address list, I'd suggest looking over the phone numbers and removing the ones you no longer use. Occasionally I find a number on my phone and I can't even remember who it is!

Use waiting time - when you are waiting at a doctor's appointment, waiting to pick your child up, or another such time to decluter your phone list. I'm not a very good waiter, and I start twitching if I don't have something to do. :-)

Don't let me overwhelm you with both jobs - pace yourself and put it on your schedule or to do list. Then you can mark it off and congratulate yourself!

More Ideas for Get Organized Month: Get Organized Month - Organize Your Shoes, Get Organized Month - Decluttering Your Underwear Drawer, Get Organized Month - Decluttering Your Sock Drawer


What do you feel is your most urgent organizing task?