So what are you supposed to do if you love Shoeboxed–the team, the spirit, the innovation, the product–but you just don’t feel like you shop online enough to benefit from signing up?

We think you should think again! Shoeboxed is totally worth it, even if you only buy things online a couple times a year.

I can say this with certainty because I am the same way; in fact, I don’t buy things in general unless I have to, and sometimes I don’t buy things even when I know I should (you can see the picture of my shoes in the blog archives for an example of this).

Anyway, a few days ago I remembered that my time in Berlin is drawing to a close, and that I actually need to start getting ready to go back to the good old U.S. of A. I quickly realized that I had absolutely no idea when my return flight was leaving, or even on which day the flight departed, and that it would probably be in my best interests to find that information out. Of course, my travel itinerary was nowhere to be found. However, I knew the airline had sent a copy of the flight information with my e-ticket receipt to my e-mail address. This was not exactly reassuring, though, since that e-mail was a few months old, and finding one e-mail in my inbox is like finding one specific needle in a haystack made out of other needles.

Long story short, I searched through my inbox for what felt like a really long time, and ended up asking my mom to send me her copy of my itinerary. She was not impressed.

Obviously, none of this would have happened if I had been using Shoeboxed when I bought the ticket—my e-ticket information would have been easily accessible right from the start. This experience made me realize that it doesn’t matter how often you shop online—Shoeboxed is a great tool for anyone to have.

When I first registered for my Shoeboxed account, I wanted to fill up my account with all my purchasing information. But alas, I am a poor college student, and couldn’t afford to go on a shopping spree right then and there just to watch the receipts go in (though I did make one or two impulse buys anyway…). So I went through my personal inbox, and dug out all my old receipts. It was a pain, but I realized that it was the last time I would ever have to sift through thousands of e-mails to find the few important receipts.

I forwarded all these e-mail receipts to my @shoeboxed.com account, and they show up just as they would have if the store had sent it directly there. Shoeboxed doesn’t care that I forwarded it, the plane ticket I bought six months ago still says it’s from Travelocity. Sweet!

Once I had all my old receipts in there, I was shocked at how much I had spent online in the past two years. Old purchases I had completely forgotten about really reminded me of how much I consistently overlook my budget. I don’t consider myself an avid online shopper, but the expenses were really racking up!

There’s just no better way to get an comprehensive snapshot of your spending than to see everything you’ve bought, all listed in one place. It’s so simple, and it’s the core functionality of Shoeboxed. If you haven’t tried it yet, you’re missing out!

In my 21 years of life, I’ve bought ONE t-shirt from J.Crew online, but in the last two weeks, I’ve received the following e-mails from their online store:

Last Chance for free shipping
Presenting… free shipping
New at Crewcuts… Seaside Chic
Hello sale…
New men’s must-have: the cardigan

Let’s recap why this is annoying. First of all, I don’t need a cardigan, and neither do the rest of you guys out there. Second of all, I’m in Germany, and J. Crew doesn’t even ship here, so I couldn’t care less what their non-existent shipping costs. Third, CrewCuts is the children’s clothing line at J.Crew, and unless there’s something I don’t know about, I’m not buying baby clothes for a while. Though I do like J. Crew otherwise, I hate getting all these irrelevant e-mails in my inbox.

But now that Shoeboxed is up and running, I went to jcrew.com and modified my account settings. In about 20 seconds, I changed the e-mail associated with my account to my @shoeboxed.com address. Now all these store notifications come into my Shoeboxed account. I also one-click-unsubscribed from J.Crew e-mails, causing them to only show up in my Shoeboxed account, and to stay away from my personal inbox.

I still like J. Crew, and I still get those e-mails in my Shoeboxed account, but now I don’t have to have them in my inbox, where all my important personal communications are. My personal inbox is breathing easier, and so am I.

I also did this for all the other stores where I shop (and the stores that send me e-mails even though I don’t buy stuff from them) and changed out my e-mail address.

So now, whenever I’m in the mood to shop, I just go to my Shoeboxed account, see all my new e-mails, check out all the places that are having sales or recommending new products, and start shopping from there.

We’re all looking for ways to keep our receipts neat. And with the advances in computer and internet technology, wouldn’t it be great to have a system that automatically managed your receipts? We could save time, save money, and make life a little simpler.

I was recently reading an article from the Salt Lake City Deseret News that discussed the option of storing your receipts in a computer file [link]. Marilyn Reston wrote to Heloise, a local columnist, recommending that she copy her emailed receipts and store them safely in digital files on her computer:

Dear Heloise: Don’t print receipts for online orders — just highlight the information, copy, paste and save to a computer file. Like everyone else seems to be, I’m drowning in clutter. This past year, I ordered most of my Christmas presents online, and I pasted the order information into a computer file rather than printing it out. I labeled the file by the vendor and date so I can find what I’m looking for if necessary. I have saved myself a lot of filing!

-Marilyn M., Reston, Va.

This is a great idea; you’ll also save paper and printer ink. And when the item is delivered, you can make a note in the file, along with any remarks about the item such as quality and shipping comments, as well as pros and cons of ordering from the particular company, for future reference.

-Heloise

Marilyn had a great idea. Email receipts are a valuable tool that can help you simplify your life - If you use them in the right way. These days, email receipts are only good for one thing - clogging up your personal inbox with unwanted, impersonal messages. They aren’t as useful as paper receipts because they are hard to read, hard to sort, and scattered among personal emails to family and friends.

Marilyn devised a great way to make digital receipts useful — by getting them out of her email box and into a clearly filed system on her hard drive. And as Heloise pointed out, she will be saving paper and ink the whole time. Al Gore would be proud. But there’s one problem. Marilyn must have a lot of time on her hands, because filing each and every one of her online purchases would take forever. I love the idea of organizing my finances and simplifying my inbox, but I don’t have the time to do it myself.

Lucky for me, Shoeboxed will take Marilyn’s solution to a whole new level. After signing up with Shoeboxed, your receipts will be automatically organized without cluttering your inbox. And as an added bonus, you’ll stop getting annoying corporate spam.

Now if I could only get in contact with Marilyn and give her the good news!