Wednesday, June 17, 2009

WFMW- Free-Cycle Envelopes


Do you pay your bills on-line? I do- I absolutely LOVE Bank of America's on-line bill pay service. I can see who I've paid when on one convenient screen and I don't have to pay for stamps, which seem to keep going up in price! I also receive a lot of my bills electronically, which cuts down on the amount of paper I have coming into the house. Less paper to keep track of and file means less clutter, and I'm all about that!

I don't receive all of my bills electronically though, and the ones that I do receive on paper generally include a self addressed envelope for me to send my payment back. I used to just throw these away since I didn't need them for mailing in my payment. Now, though, I use them for other things-

Shopping lists- coupons, ECB or RR and loyalty cards all go inside. My list of stuff to buy goes right on the outside of the envelope. It's an easy way to keep track and look like I have things together at the register.

**edited 8/17/09- turns out this is NOT a good idea... see this post for details.**
Envelopes to mail stuff to other people- I use these free envelopes to mail rebate forms or even printable coupons to my grandma who doesn't have a computer. (Love ya grams!) I have some old blank address labels (also free-cycled) that I just stick right on top of the little window or pre-printed address on the envelope.
**edited 8/17/09- turns out this is NOT a good idea... see this post for details.**

Coupon Storage- I know that there are some people out there who are fans of keeping the coupon inserts whole and just clipping what they need, but they took up too much space for me. I also found that I was missing coupons for stuff that I used all the time since I wasn't clipping them and the coupon blogs generally just list coupons for free or nearly free stuff. I still organize most of the coupons by insert type and date, I just go through and clip everything and stick them in an envelope labeled with the date and insert type. That way, I can just go through and pull out what I need for a shopping trip and I also have a working knowledge of the coupons that are out there.

What else could we be doing with these free envelopes??

As always, you can visit We Are THAT Family for more great WFMW ideas!

3 comments:

  1. I do this too :) We're following Dave Ramsey, so we use these envelopes for all those categories we take out in cash. I don't get my bills electronically either- I'm much more likely to forget to put numbers in billpay if it's just in my email box.

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  2. I love Bank of America bill pay too!

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  3. Great recycling ideas of envelopes.

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