Old School Papers System!

Hey! Sorry, I know I've been gone for a bit. School is just crazy! Anyway, since I finally have a break tonight, I thought I'd tell you about a system I recently created. It's a simple solution for an annoying problem. What to do with all those school and class papers at the end of the year/semester/quarter. Whether you have children in school or you're currently in school, you know school is far from paperless. Yes, many college course instructors try to make their classes as paperless as possible but if you're like me, you need mostly everything on paper. The downfall of this is when the class is over I have a ton of papers that I no longer need but I also cannot simply throw them away. Maybe it's silly but I have trouble throwing away all the hard work I did for a class. But it's also impractical to keep my school papers in the binders I used throughout the semester. By the end of every semester, my binders and dividers are usually in pretty good shape so it's frustrating only using them for one semester and then packing them away under my bed because I don't have another place for all that paper. Then, when the next semester starts, I have to buy binders all over again. And they're not cheap! At least not for a college student.  Luckily, I've found the solution:

Accordion files! I found these ones in the $1 section at Target but I know Target switches out what they have in the $1 section so they won't always have these. Luckily, I see cheap accordion files at many stores. These really are the perfect solution.

After I got a few of these, I came home from Target totally pumped. I grabbed my binders from last spring semester and this past fall semester and got to work. I pulled all the papers from the first binder and moved them to one of the accordion files, giving each class of the semester its own section in its accordion file. I then labeled each section divider with the name of the class that section is for. Since I did this project before I started this blog, I don't have pictures of when I was doing the project. Sorry! But I will show you the insides of the folders so you can see what I mean (sorry the first picture is out of focus):

See? Pretty simple. I'm pretty sure I have more of my work from college class at my mom and step dad's house in California. I'll check when I'm home over the summer. Anyway, the folders now sit on my bookshelf, with all my composition books and notebooks from past semesters, just in case I ever need them:

My favorite part of this project is how it kept me from having to buy another binder this semester. Here's some pictures of the binder I used last semester and am using again this semester:

It's in great shape, right? Definitely too good of shape to be stuffed under my bed and forgotten about. Although, I must admit, it's starting to fall apart:

I know, I know. This thing doesn't have very much life left in it. I'd say it's got a couple of semesters left. :-P I also have another binder that used to be used for school, but is now waiting to be re-purposed:

 This binder has a scratch on the front:

 Other than that...

 it's in great shape!

Now to figure out what to do with it...

Quick tip for students: Try to use the same spiral notebook for as many classes as possible. For example, I use the same notebook for Spanish 102 as the notebook I used for Spanish 101. This keeps all of my Spanish notes together and makes it very easy for me to go back to my Spanish 101 notes if I ever need to. You could also use the same notebook for several unrelated classes but obviously, you won't be needing to reference old notes for an unrelated class you're in now. No matter what classes you use your notebooks for, using the same notebook for multiple classes will save money and paper. 

Well there you go! I hope this system helps you get organize as much as it's helped me! :)