Organizing Receipts

Well, I'm no organization expert, nor do I have to have things precisely in order. But I do like a functioning level of organization so I can put my hands on things when I need them. The beginning of a new year always seems like a good time to get started on that. While my house doesn't look like it came off the pages of Real Simple or BH&G magazines, it works for me.

One of my main methods is The Punch Bowl. I keep a large glass punch bowl on my fridge, and in it goes every receipt I ever get. Target, grocery stores, Kohl's, receipts from eating out, bank deposit tickets, that sort of thing. When I come in the house with those kind of receipts, into the punch bowl they go. I can't tell you how many times I've sorted through that bowl to find a receipt so I could return an item to the store. They are all piled up together, but at least in one place, and I can usually find what I need within 5 minutes.

So 2009 is here, taxes are looming, so I went through The Punch Bowl the other day to sort out receipts for medical (prescriptions, office visits), charitable (drive-through donations at Goodwill and such), and the biggest category, "all other." In doing so, I decided that grocery store receipts are entirely too long. I had quite a few for $50 in groceries, but the receipt was 2 feet long! The bottom half of many receipts was nothing but advertisements! Some of the bottom halves told me how many gasoline credits I had for discount gasoline (you burn 4 gallons getting to their one gas station), what sales were coming next week, or the phone number to call and tell them how they're doing. But I decided I didn't need to keep all that for posterity. So armed w/ scissors, I proceeded to keep the vital information and pitch the rest. I reduced the overall bulk of paper receipts by about a third!

Then there's the paper itself. Some stores, like Nordstrom's and Talbot's, have very heavy paper, nearly a card stock, for their receipts. It comes out of the cash register straight and flat, and doesn't curl up in The Punch Bowl. Walmart, on the other hand, is little more than fax paper and curls into a little tube. And don't let the heat get to it, or it will all turn black and you can't read a word of it. And Dr. Pepper spilled on an Albertson's receipt makes the printing disappear. Ask me how I know. Then there are the receipts that are so faint they are all but useless. I couldn't even tell what side one of them was printed on. And there is one little local grocery store I hit about every other month for bargains that still rings up items by price only. So you have a receipt full of 1.79's and 2.25's and .89's and have no idea what you were charged for a particular item; you just have to trust you were friendly enough to the cashier to not get overcharged.

And how about receipts that no one but the store manager can read or decipher? The ones where they're so busy telling you what a great weekly bargain you got and how much you saved on that one item, you can't quite figure out how much per pound they charged you for the apples. Or where the description of the item in no way resembles what the item actually is. So you walk out of the store examining your receipt wondering what in the world you bought that was called "Mah Prep Gold IQF." If you manage to figure it out, you still are not sure if they took off the right amount of savings when they scanned your "club card." We'll discuss club cards in another post.