Get Sharp For Tax Season With X-ACTO

It's that time of year again! The time when we gather up all of our W-2s, 1099s, and other tax forms and sit down to file our taxes. You would think that since I'm an accountant that I would do our family's taxes, right? Wrong! My husband actually does ours with the help of tax software. That doesn't mean that I don't have work to do, though. Since I did make a little bit of money off of this blog last year, I have to get my records straight and gather up all of that information for Brian to enter into our tax filing.

Even though I do most of my record keeping on spreadsheets, I'm still a pencil and paper girl at heart. Even at work where we are supposed to be going paperless, you will always find me making check marks on print outs, highlighting important items in contracts and even doing some math with a pencil. I have used mechanical pencils for years, but the problem with those is that if you run out of lead, you can't write anymore, which is what recently happened to me at home.

I was horrible about keeping blog records last year, so I need get all of that information gathered up and put into a spreadsheet that I can run totals on. Part of this process will involve printing out my Paypal history to enter in my spreadsheet. Enter a pencil here. I will need to check off the transactions as I go.

Not only did I need a pencil sharpener, but Rylie has been asking for one too. She has gotten pencils as favors at birthday parties, and last week she got two more on Valentine's Day. The pencils hadn't been sharpened, of course, and we had nothing to sharpen them with.

I recently received a link to an X-ACTO Spira Coupon, and that made my decision as to which pencil sharpener to buy an easy one. I headed out to Walmart with the family earlier this afternoon to purchase our X-ACTO Pencil Sharpener. Even though the tiny little section that held the #XACTO products was in total disarray, I finally found the bright red Spira sharpener. We added some other "necessities" to our cart, checked out (and I even remembered to use my coupon!) and headed home to sharpen some pencils!

Check out my Google+ album to see photos from our entire shopping experience.

Our taxes will be done in Brian's "home office", which consists of his laptop at our kitchen table. We set the new Spira X-ACTO Pencil Sharpener up there so the kids could sharpen their pencils first.

The sharpener worked great! In a matter of seconds, both of the kids had sharpened pencils and were ready to write in their new notebooks.

Note: This product is not meant for children. Always supervise children when sharpening pencils with any type of pencil sharpener.

Once the kids were writing away in their "journals", as Rylie likes to call them, I took the Spira sharpener upstairs to it's permanent home in my home office.

I also brought a couple of the kids' pencils with me. Why should I have to use boring yellow pencils?

My home office is a little bit more elaborate than Brian's. I actually have a desk, even though it is generally cluttered with all of my papers full of chicken scratch blog notes.

One of these days I will get around to recording all of my blog income from 2011. I guess I better get started, though, since "tax day" will be here before we know it!

For more information on this pencil sharpener and more office supplies, visit the X-ACTO website. You can stay up to date on the latest office supplies and even learn about special promotions by liking X-ACTO on Facebook and following Elmer's on Twitter.

Disclosure: This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias. #CBias All opinions are my own.