Camlan: you are one awesome ~ and super organized~ person! You've inspired me and I love your ideas and system!!! I'm following your system. After I read your suggestions, I ran down to the local Dollar Tree where I picked up 10 large plastic shoe boxes, ($10) which will temporarily hold my photos as I sort through them. I also bought 2 packs of (20 total) manila file folders ($2) that I'm going to cut up into dividers for each box to categorize the pics by year and then subcategories for events, holidays and whatever. I like your idea about scanning the best onto flash drives. I can store the master FD in our safe deposit box, I guess. I'd like to create DVDs with special events, holidays, vacations on them vents on them and then make copies for our two kids . . . eventually. I just went back to look at my intimidatingly huge box of photos and I'm so glad that I now have a plan of action to deal with them! Thank you for taking the time to put your ideas down for me and for many of us here who are in similar situations. I really appreciate it! Now, has anybody created their own DVD's from their scanned photos? I do want to make up some myself. I'm too frugal and too creative to have some company do it for me . . . but is it very difficult to do if you have a good photo scanner? Did you use any special program? DLM: I totally agree with you, I know many people that would love to hire Camlan to do this for them. Goldie: good luck with your own project. And, yes, definitely archival-quality albums and photo boxes. Eandhl: good idea and one I'm going to use: get rid of all copies (and similar) photos right away. Thanks! Dedtired: I'm right there with you regarding the albums. I've run out of space for more! Lynn

We love to cook and bake, and have 6-10 cookbooks that we use regularly, plus binders with collections of recipes. Loose "want-to-try" recipes go into an expanding file folder until we try them out. In there they're roughly organized by season... we garden and tend to cook cyclically: lots of fruit and vegetables and grilling in the summer, lots of baking, etc. in the winter. Once we try it, if we really like the results, the loose recipe sheets go into a binder. The key to our recipe system is an old rotary Rolodex file. We simply make a card for each of our all-time favorite recipes (we have a lot of them!), and cross-reference the location of original recipe. For example we'll list a cookbook name and page number, or "Holiday Binder" or whatever. We also make a note of any special ingredients, or if we'd made it for a party or whatever. The rolodex is organized alphabetically by main ingredient, unless we have a lot of recipes for a particular item: for example "Soups" are all together, "Breads", "Cakes," etc. We've been using the rolodex for years, and it works great for us. We keep it in the kitchen. It's fun and easy to flip thru it for ideas. We bought the rolodex at a rummage sale for next to nothing, but I know you can still find them new. Most large office supply stores carry the blank cards. Here is a link that might be useful: classic rotary Rolodex

We have two IKEA Hopen units in our playroom now. Each unit has four sliding wire drawers (that hold a TON of toys) with three shelves above to hold bigger toys and baskets of toys. I love this system because the wire baskets pull out so I can remove a single basket (say one full of wooden blocks) and place it on the floor for the kids. When they're done they load the blocks back in the basket and it gets tucked back into the unit and behind closed doors. In our last home, we also used some wardrobe/pantry type units that we found at Lowe's. They were huge and afforded a lot of storage. My preference is always for storage that is hidden because I don't like looking at the visual clutter. If that doesn't bother you the shoebox size toy bin shelves (available at Target) are good options too. I've included one of the favorite systems I found when I was looking for playroom inspiration. The IKEA cabinets pictured though have since been discontinued. If you run your mouse over the second pic you can even see how the items are organized in each cabinet! Here is a link that might be useful: Playroom Cabinet Pictures

Hubby is feeling better this morning he says. Thinking maybe pancreatitis attack. It happens with the surgery he had. And yes I do keep a running journal of issues between visits. Not as detailed as it used to be but I guess I am going to have to do more of that. It is very helpful. I was given up for adoption as a baby so was not raised by my birth family. I found my Mom when I was 32 and father shortly after but he denied me for 14 years. Finally he agreed to the DNA test and he was 99.42% positive to be my father. But he was not a very nice person and his sister and her kids were not willing to be friendly so I let it go. Funny I salvaged photos and school yearbooks and hauled them home on a plane for them to send to them. I thought I was doing a nice thing. I called to let them know and left message on answering machine and next thing I am getting a letter from an attorney demanding all I had of THEIRS in my possession. Well Screw that. I sent the year books and a few photos and called it good. I do not think I really wanted to try harder to be friendly with a family so angry and mean. Not sure my red hair had anything to do with it.I was well into grey by the time my father accepted me as his daughter. He dies a couple of years ago but I had not spoken to him in a few years before that. It was never a close relationship. My Mom and I have a good relationship. Our 34th anniversary of my finding her was Feb 12th. We had a nice phone visit.