greeting cards & stationary

Happy Easter, everyone! I woke up this morning feeling much better {thank you antibiotics!} but am still planning to have a low-key day in. Since I’m still getting over my cold/bronchitis, I picked a relaxing and easy organizational task to do today. I did it all while lounging in my jammies on my couch, watching the latest episode of The Voice on Hulu {go Jordis! you rock!}

I already confessed my love for tea. I also have an unabashed love of greeting cards and pretty stationary. My good friends know to keep me away from Hallmark and Papyrus stores — I’m on self-imposed probation. Even though I have a ton of stationary already, I can never walk out of one of those stores empty-handed. There are just so many beautiful and cute and lovely cards! I am the type of person who has a birthday card picked out for someone two years in advance, saving it and saving it because it is just so perfect for them and what they mean to me.

If anything, I’ve gotten even *more* into stationary the past couple years, since I moved to Indiana from California. Being far away from many of my friends and family has fueled my love of sending old-fashioned S.W.A.K. letters and cards through the mail. Birthdays, anniversaries, minor holidays, missing you, thinking of you, just saying hi — any and all occasions are opportunities to pop a little note in the mail to let my loved ones know how much I love them.

The problem: I had so many various cards for various occasions that it was difficult to remember what I had — and where I’d put it. Cards accumulated in the drawers of my desk, wedged on my bookshelves, stacked on the end table. I knew I needed a system to get my stationary organized {and keep it that way!}

So, last week as I was browsing the dollar section at Target, I came across this cute file folder.

Perfect! I grabbed it and brought it home, where it’s spent the past week sitting on my kitchen table, waiting for me to do something with it.

Today was that day. My first step was getting all my cards & stationary together in one pile, and then sorting them into different categories. Next, I used these categories to write out labels for each section of the file folder.

My final categories are:

-Birthday/Anniversary
-Friends/Thinking of you
-Get Well/Sympathy
-Thank you
-Gramps {I send a lot of cards to my grandpa, who lives alone and loves getting mail, so I made a special section just for him!}

Then all I had to do was place each card into its designated slot! And, viola — an organized, compact stationary folder!

Now I know exactly what I have, what cards I need, and where to find everything. Which means I can concentrate my energies on tracking down every last one of the amazing greeting cards designed by Taylor Swift {I love her stationary almost as much as I love her music!} Like isn’t this one adorable?