Deal wiith my paper problem

I now have boxes in my office with labels such as “medical bills,” “bank statements,” “paid bills,” and so on.

I am also sorting through papers and tossing or shredding as needed. Annnnnd . . . . I put the shredder in my office, where it’s most needed!

I am also laughing here, since I just found a file labeled “dreaded horrible stuff” and another labeled “incomprehensible stuff.” I am afraid to look inside them. :/

shredding and tearing up papers and old bills, unsubscribing from email lists (not paper, but the same kind of clutter).

Lots of progress in the last 3 weeks or so.

I just opened a piece of mail from October 10, 2008. Good thing it wasn’t urgent. :)

and I am free! Free! Faxing, however, is far from free . . . $23.00. At the UPS Store, it’s a buck or a buck fifty a page, I forget. Yikes.

Anyway, I am free of this bit of paperwork that has haunted me, dogged my every step, and hung over my head like the Sword of Damocles for the last eight months.

I can have some bills sent to me online through the bank, then pay them online! Who knew?

It’s not like me to be such a Luddite, but when online billpay first came out there was a transaction fee that I was not about to pay, so I ignored online billpay for a long time.

But it is totally cool.
Love. It.

home security bill and our cable online. Paying online is much easier than paying by check.

I signed up for online billpay years ago, but I never used it because at the time, they were charging a per-transaction fee, and since I knew it saved the bank money to process electronically, I was ticked at the idea of getting free checks and free check processing but being charged for electronic transactions.

Now, though, electronic transactions are free, so I save the cost of a stamp by paying online.

Yay!

couple of things, and while I was there, I found a little flyer that says that people who have set up online billpay but have not used it can earn $100 by using it three times a month, three months in a row or some such.

So I want to simplify my life with online billpay, and the Universe is willing to give me $100 as a reward. Okay, I am on it!

I would deal with anything in the mail before dinner.

Well, we plan and the Universe laughs.

In the mail were two of the things I just friggin’ hate to see. My health insurance at work wanted me to fill out a form detailing what other insurance hubby and I have, including Medicare. So I had to find my ID number and the phone number for dental and prescription coverage . . . all the insurance is through work, why don’t they know this already? And I had to find hub’s Medicare card (he’s not 65, but you get one after being disabled for 2 or 3 years). I had already put the info on the website to update, why had the health insurance company not seen it? Sheesh.

Then I had another form from hubby’s longterm disability insurance from which he gets a whopping $100 per month till he’s 65. (Not complaining about the company, they did pony up a good sum till his SS and retirement kicked in.) They wanted, for their hundred bucks, a form filled out telling what work Nick could do (none) and what jobs he held (none). Also, there was a form authorizing every medical entity on the face of the earth and on planets yet undiscovered to release any info they had about Nick. Then there was a form for me to send to the doc for her to fill out about Nick’s health.

Kill me now.

Well, I did fill out all the forms I could fill out and mailed them the next day. I did not finish them till 10 p.m. I still have the one for the doc. Since his neurologist has died and his new neuro has never seen him and has no available appointments, I am not sure what to do with it.

So much for staying on top of things day by day.

Yesterday the Census form came. I did fill that out, and it’s ready to go.

Nick and I watched an episode of Hoarders. As we watched, I got a basket of mail and began to sort through it and toss stuff. I told Nick that watching Hoarders always makes me want to get rid of some of the excess.

Warning: This is going to be a long, rambling entry, so be patient or be gone!

I was thinking as I sorted that paper is my personal hell, the thing I accumulate too much of. It is so bad that I can never find what I want, so bad that I sometimes forget to pay bills because they are at the bottom of a stack somewhere, so bad that I don’t open all my mail. Although I have read that one should look at each piece of mail just once, I do not do that. I look at what I have to and put it aside for later. What I don’t think is immediate, I put aside. I avoid dealing with all the paper and thus I am afraid to throw any away. It might be important.

I used to not be that way, just like the woman on Hoarders used to not be a hoarder while her kids were growing up. It came out that sometimes something happened that made the person react by hoarding. Well, though I don’t consider myself a true hoarder, since I get no enjoyment out of the papers I keep, there is something that happened that caused me to react differently to mail and such. When Nick got out of the hospital, there was a huge insurance glitch, and much of it occurred while I was at the hospital with Nick and not even home to check the mail. When I came back and picked up the mail, there was an avalanche of it, much of it overdue medical bills unpaid by insurance. I was getting phine calls, threats to send stuff to collection, and who knows what. I was completely overwhlemed. I had to deal with Nick and try to straighten out the insurance and deal with the mail and the phone calls.

It was then that mail turned from a pleasant or at least neutral thing to an unpleasant thing. I put off opening it, and when I did open it, I just stuffed it back into the envelope and set it aside. Then when I finally had to face it, there was a huge pile of it.

Though the huge insurance glitch is still behind me, my dread of mail remains. If I do not have to open it right away, I don’t. Pure junk mail I do toss, and catalogs I usually look through with Nick and then toss.

But in that basket I found doodles and notes dating back to Nick’s hospitalization, expired coupons, much unopened mail, paid bills from 2009, unopened bank statements, and even a few catalogs and junk mail.

I need to start cleaning out the old stuff I don’t need and dealing with the new stuff in a better way. We shall see how it goes.