Organize Your Personal Information

Happy Thursday! I love posting my Organize Now blog and have been getting a lot of great feedback from you! I am so happy that many of you are joining along and getting organized right along with me. Jennifer Ford Berry has so many great tips in her book and I have really enjoyed this journey so far.

If you are just joining us, you can catch up on Week 1 about Organizing Your Mind and Life Vision HERE, Week 2 about Organizing Your Priorities HERE,
Week 3 about Organizing Your Schedule HERE
and Week 4 about Organizing Your Cleaning Schedule HERE.

Today we are starting a new section of the book 

This is not the most exciting area to organize for most, but it is one of the most important. This week we are focusing on our personal information.

I realized when I read this chapter, that although my husband and I have all of our important personal information, it is not in one location that we could easily access in case of an emergency. Is that true for you too? It’s so important to write things down and keep them in a place that is easy to access quickly.

1. Find a good place to store all of your important personal information. This could be on your computer (keep a back up copy too!), in a file folder or filing cabinet. There are some good templates online that you could use or you could make one up to keep track of your info. 

2. Categorize your personal information. Make sure all of your health and financial records are up to date and easily accessible to you. Another area is safety with emergency numbers, license and VIN numbers for your car, current photos of everyone in your family with their height, weight and a date on it. We have tons of digital pictures of our kids, but not too many current ones of everyone that are actually printed. This is a great tip in case of an emergency.

3. Purchase a fire proof safe or safety deposit box to keep important documents. These may include:  


–birth, marriage and death certificates


–your will – if you don’t have one – make one now! We did this through Willmaker when we became parents. It was easy to do and we just had to take it to a notory to make it legal. My good friend’s dad passed away over a year ago and he did not have a will. It has been a very difficult thing for their family to go through with the legal issues involved and it is still unresolved today. Make your wishes known legally so your loved ones don’t have to go through what my friend and her family is going through.


–your household inventory – be sure to keep it updated. It may be a good idea to take a video as you walk through your house to keep track.


Tips


Request a free credit report each year. My husband was the victim of identity theft when he was in college and it was a mess to resolve. It’s much easier to stay on top of it before something happens.

Take new photos of each member of your family each year or more frequently if you have young children. Here are a couple pictures of my little guys that I took the other day:)

For more tips on Organizing your personal information, please check out Organize Now by Jennifer Ford Berry.   


Thanks again for reading! I hope the posts have been helpful for your own organization. Please feel free to link your blog or social media to mine to share with your readers. And let me know how you are doing and any tips you may have. I love to hear from you!


Have a great day!

Rebecca