Yes, for real. Everyone wants to channel their inner Martha Stewart, right? I mean the completely organized one with a well marked place for everything with not even one piece of paper out place, not the one that had to spend some time as a guest of Uncle Sam.

I saw an easy way to corral vacation mementos (the paper kind) on her website last week. It’s called an As-You-Go Vacation Keepsake and I think it’s a really good idea.

Even while camping paper seems to pile up and create its own little “clutter monster” and a lot of the time it may be things you’d like to keep such as brochures and fliers from the campground and places you visit, maps, postcards, ticket stubs, etc.

Martha’s idea (or the idea of someone in her organization), is to take a loose leaf ring and a hole punch along, punch a hole in all the papers from the trip as they are collected, and put them on the steel ring. It keeps all the papers corralled in one place and when you get home you instantly have a neat and organized memento.

The rings are really inexpensive. A bag of 16 of the 1″ size costs $3.79 from Staples. A bag of 9 of the 2″ size also costs $3.79.

I use them in my office all the time to keep paper organized so I’m kind of bummed that I didn’t think of the idea of using it to keep trip mementos in one spot before Martha did.