The Family Yellow Pages

Our 2011 copy of the yellow pages came last month, and it’s still sitting on the TV stand where I dropped it. (Need to work on putting things away when they arrive… I know). I haven’t needed it in the past month, but I keep a copy  just for the times when we need to look up a local business.

This morning was one of those times — I needed to call our mechanic to make an appointment for one of the cars. So out came the phone book. As I was flipping through the pages trying to find the listing, I remembered how much I dislike using the phone book. It’s cumbersome. It’s unwieldy. They don’t organize things the way I would. And then I realized: why am I looking something up in the phone book for a number I plan on using again? I should write it down and make my own personal Yellow Pages, for all the numbers I call regularly from the house phone.

So I did.

I just created a Microsoft Word document and put in three columns: The name of the business, the address (or directions, so I can send someone else if the occasion ever warrants) and the phone number. Then I went through all the numbers we call on a regular or semi-regular basis: dentists, doctors, hair salons, barbers, pet boarding, the kids’ schools, and got them all in there. Then I printed it out and stuck it in a sheet protector in my still-very-incomplete Household Binder. And voila! Don’t need to dig through the phone book for those numbers ever again!

I also took the few minutes to program all these numbers into my cell phone.

Total time investment: 15 minutes.

Yay me!