How To Use ThriftyFun Effectively

We all love ThriftyFun, right? Lots of times I have thought, "WOW, I would never have thought about that", "What a cute idea" or "What a great tip". I vow that this is something I am not going to forget. And then I promptly forget what it was about. So I came up with these ideas of how to save the information that I need. ThriftyFun really is your best resource for many great ideas. They have thousands of tips that have been sent in from around the world.

Navigating

Let's talk about navigating the ThriftyFun site to find information that you need. On the top right hand side of the site you have a search box where you can type in what kind of information you are searching for. Let's type in "Cookies" and see what happens. When I typed in Cookies, I got over 300 results. So now I can just scroll down through the recipes to find which one I want.

Indexing

Now let's say I know the day that the tip ran that I want to find. Across the top, you have a bar when you can search the newsletters from 1999 on up to this year. Next to the home button is one that says "Index", click on it and it takes you to the page where newsletters are archived and tips are shown by date. Click on the year, which is in the first column to the left, and then click your way down through the months to see what is archived there. ThriftyFun.com - Index by Date

Organizing

So what is the best way to organize and find the information that you really need when you need it? I save all the newsletters and burn them to CD but that does not make it much easier to find what I need when I need it, although I love reading through the old newsletters. Here is what I do:

I set up a 3 ring binder with index sheets so I could organize each category. The categories are Crafts, Recipes, Party Ideas, and Entertainment Tips. Now when a Thrifty tip comes out, I have a place to put them.

On my computer in my word processing program, I have set up four files named TF Crafts, TF recipes, TF Party Ideas, and Entertainment TF Tips. To make a file in your word processing program, open the program: Go to File and click on Save As. Now name your file. Make sure that your program is going to save this file to My Documents so you will know where to find the file. Close the program.

You now have a file in that program that you can go to whenever you need it. Now when there is something I really want to keep, I copy and paste it to my file. Not only do I have all my great tips in one file but now I can print it out and put it in my notebook for those times when someone else is using my computer. Plus, when I am working a craft, I love to have a picture to reference.

You could also use Notepad or Wordpad to save your tips. As above, you would just name the file with your heading and then click on Save As. You can keep this right on your desktop and just copy and paste right to this file. Just be aware that Notepad will not take pictures and that Wordpad, on my computer at least, turns Wordpad documents into Word documents. But Wordpad will copy text and paste pictures.

Editors Note: If you are a registered user, you can bookmark any article on ThriftyFun by simply hitting "bookmark" above the tip or recipe. It will ask you what folder to put this in from a list of general topics. If you are signed in when you submit a tip, request or feedback, they will also show up here. If you haven't checked out this feature, it can be very useful for organizing interesting tips.