sort out my paperwork

I’m writing this about 2 weeks after the fact, but I needed some time to just breathe and settle down.

I’ve renounced my original citizenship and gained a new one. In the process, I’ve been without a citizenship or any valid form of identification (not to mention job, health insurance and similar things) for about a week. Brrr, scary feeling. There’d been a potential for some serious fsckups due to various paperwork deadlines coming up, but thanks to some very nice and helpful public administration workers (wow, they actually exist) it was all sorted before the catastrophe actually happened. Phew.

I’m now a citizen of the EU. No more waiting in lines at border crossings. Or getting called to the side for a more thorough search. I think I have a new phobia – borders and border officials!

So, that means the biggest part of my paperwork is sorted out. Anything else that comes up is insignificant in comparison. :P

Just like I thought – everything is happening at once. But it should be all over by the end of June. _{Keep your fingers crossed. If I mess up anything, I’ll be an apatride.}

I finally have a valid, legal driver’s license.

But the war is still on: tax papers (I thought I had all the bases covered, but nope, they thought of something new), citizenship, visa…

For reasons I’d rather not go into, I attended a lecture along with 60 truck drivers. I was one of the 2 females there (I wonder if she drives a truck?). Interesting. :)

...for now.

I’m happy to mark this one complete. The vast piles in my kitchen threatening to cause an avalanche and bury us in paper have been cleared.

The filing cabinet is serving its purpose well. Each individual hanging file could do with a sort out but I’ll do that as I use each section.

I’m always going to have a busy in-tray but that’s fine as long as its actual ‘things to do’ and not filing/recycling etc. I am not going to let this get out of hand again!

I should’ve kept quiet yesterday.

Finally, after receiving a filing cabinet from a freecycler, I am getting the paperwork sorted!

I have filled two binliner with recycling (why oh why do I have payslips going back 12 years and receipts that have faded so much I don’t know what they were for?!) – the filing cabinet if filling up with the stuff I really need to keep.

I’m hoping to complete this goal over the next few days although a substantial amount of paperwork will be moving over to the memory boxes/scrapbooks goal.

I made a big effort with this this morning. I woke up feeling inspired to really go for it, put on some great music and was reasonably ruthless with all the papers. I threw away receipts from clothes I bought 8 years ago! Don’t think I need those any longer! I found loads of old CVs as well.

I’m not checking it off yet as I haven’t actually put everything away yet, but I have bank statements in a ringbinder and everything else in a concertina file, it’s pretty organised. Yay!

Cheques banked, yay! It feels good to be on top of things. Now I just have to organise my paperwork so I know where it all is and never have to hunt for things. That shouldn’t take too long, I’m dying to check this one off as it’s an easy goal.

I got the 3 cheques today which were reissued so I will bank those tomorrow along with the ones I forgot to bank last week.