15 October 2014

Keeping track of renewal dates and important information - by Anita

I was just thinking about what to write my next post about, and a little incident popped up to inspire me. Once upon a time, I used to put renewal dates into my calendar but for some reason I've just gotten out of the habit. I'm normally quite organised with this type of thing, so it hasn't caused any problems before. However, I was on my way out of the door to work the other day and I had the thought, "Oh no, I don't think I renewed the car breakdown cover!"

After several phone calls, it seems that the nice people at Volkswagen had decided to extend the free cover for a further four months to coincide with when the car was first registered. It's very nice when that type of thing happens, but it made me realise that I need to keep a record of up and coming renewal dates for my piece of mind.

After pulling out all the relevant information, I was going to enter the dates in my calendar but realised that it would be sufficient to just write them down on some lined paper. It didn't take me very long to do and it now resides in my reference/miscellaneous section at the back of my Kensington. I love the fact that it's all in one place and so easy to find.

For me, this highlights how useful my Filofaxes are for keeping important details all in one place. It used to be too easy for me to have information spread out across several notebooks, filed away or on my computer. I have started using my reference section more nowadays and I'm finding that having such easy access to useful information is quite a revelation. To give you a small glimpse into my mind/life, my first insert in the section has the following random things:
  • A recipe for my favourite plum sauce (great for chicken and duck)
  • How to increase/decrease my MacBook Pro's volume by smaller increments
  • A recipe for crafting an item for an online game I play
  • Details of the hours that my Mum, sister and Mum-in-law work
  • A post-it note on the back with the names of some wine that I enjoyed and would like to get round to buying again.
I'm sure that there are many of you that might already do something similar, but I love finding more efficient and useful ways to use my Filofaxes. I rarely change my overall system, so enjoy making the occasional tweak like this as it is needed.

5 comments:

  1. Recording renewal dates (etc) together in one section would be easy, but my fear is that I would forget to look at the list of dates and fail to act. I do like to have such information in my diary. But my handwriting looks like a spider has fallen into an inkwell and crawled out again!

    I would really like to print my own diary inserts with such renewal information (plus birthdays etc) printed on the right day.

    Does anyone do this already? Would you care to share advice and templates? I am trying to customise the Philofaxy diary inserts but the results are not to my liking.

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    1. I have to write dates directly onto monthly pages so that the information is in front of me when it's time to act. I have the upcoming 3 years of monthlies in my Filofax, and after that a page per year for the upcoming 20 years. I know that sounds nuts, but with my husband and myself and our 2 kids living overseas I have to make sure we renew passports and visas well in advance of them expiring, vaccine boosters (we don't get notices from the dr office when they are due), driver's license renewals for our home country and the country we're living in, etc.

      I would love to be able to print out monthly grid pages years in advance but I am completely inept at it. For the farther-future monthlies I use the Filofax Enthusiasts Collection undated monthly pages, which I keep meaning to do a review of. They aren't as useful to me as month grids, but they serve well as month-on-one-page planning calendars for the future when I don't need too much detail.

      For annually recurring events I have a blue page that goes behind the corresponding month (I use month grid pages with the backs of the pages lined so I can put other pages between the months) to remind me for example our car insurance renewal is due every June, home insurance and TV tax is due in August, when to have the boiler serviced, etc. Then when the month is over I just move that page to the corresponding month next year so when I need that information it's already there.

      With this method I don't miss anything, even when it happens years from now.

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    2. Like Laurie I have mine written years in advance. FC always provides the next year on a page per month and then a couple years with the months in blocks with a few lines. At first I didn't use them much, now I wouldn't sleep if they weren't in there.

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  2. I have decided that the easier thing for me to do it simply get a new battery for the MacBook Pro rather than stuff around with it. Also I think I might look at some sort of sheet I can put into the back of my FF and record the name, date and vintage of the wine that I have enjoyed

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  3. This couldn't have been written at a better time! I recently found out that my Drivers license expired...in August! Luckily it was a kind young lady at the store that brought it up as I was paying and not the police. God forbid I had gotten pulled over for whatever reason and have an expired drivers ID. Anyways, was able to get that taken care of and I now have the date it was renewed AND the new expiration date noted in my planner. :)

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