file my papers

90% of the paper clutter is legal stuff … it’s gonna be sooooo good to file it all away … a physical and emotionally cathartic purge.

So today I finally filed away ALL of the papers in the house. Stack and stack of them, I tell you! It feels so good!

I went through 3 paper bags, two drawers, and a cubby of paperwork. I separated out 2006 into a small accordian folder. I found a large one for all our manuals/warrantees. Everything has been filed by subject and put in chronological order.

Hopefully next year, I will do this in January when it’s supposed to be done. This year’s filing was a much bigger project because I have been saving all my son’s school work in case I need it for his IEP (hence the 3 paper bags). I think I may have to go through and

I’m nearly done!!! crazy!!!! that is, there’s still a box of shreddage to do and there is one kinda fat file of stuff that is to be input to the computer (crazy stuff like quotations jotted down all over, book titles, movie titles, websites I found in magazines and put on post-its, etc. – quite the mishmash of dorky little info must-haves)

3 huge boxes of filing are all put away except for that tho – produced quite a bit of recycling in addition to the stuff to shred… took me a little over 8 hours Saturday aft/eve. Whew!!!! You should see all the newly-rediscovered space in the bedroom!!

woo hoo!

computer stuff and shreddage by the 15th now…...

because Jessica needs some info off the xerox of her passport which she left with me and which of course is not filed but is in all the papers to be filed ;) so added incentive to get this done even earlier than I said, or at least partly – I’ll be filing at least some of the papers this weekend. If I’m on a roll I guess I’ll go ahead and finish filing but I also have two sets each of tests and compositions to grade this weekend so the rest of the filing might have to wait til the next weekend. Still a good start is something ! :) :) :)

The fact that this goal has been on my list for the better part of a year and has needed to be done for way longer than that is why I need to do it so drastically and why it is so foreboding since now “my papers” fill 3 large boxes! I don’t know why I’m so bad at this nowadays. I used to love to file stuff; in fact it was a favorite procrastination pastime during grad school. Now even tho I have a huge filing cabinet and lots of extra folders, etc., so I can make new labels and new categories (all of which I used to find fun) I dread it and dread it and put it off for literally years. The last time I filed them was around Thanksgiving 2005. Over that time I have needed to dig stuff out about 4 times and just somehow miraculously found whatever it was each time in about 20 minutes, either thru dumb luck or because I knew roughly how far down the paper in question lay. Each time I thought “well now you’re going to HAVE to put them all away because there’s no way you’re going to find that thing that easily THIS time” only to have fate tease me with another easily unearthed piece of paperwork. Anyway since the Needing Stuff Periodically motivation didn’t really do the trick now we’re getting to the Box Storage Space Being at a Premium motivation… My teensy abode literally has not one more spot for me to stick a big box full of papers! Plus I really want the space back that is already being taken up – it’ll be like having a new bedroom again! I know once I start digging and sorting probably a good 40% (if not more) of those papers will actually be able to be tossed anyway since I put way more things in the box than ever get filed, thinking I’ll sort later, etc.

Anyway I’ll be grading tests this next weekend but during that next week and then Sat/Sun the 10th and 11th I’ll finish up hopefully, or if I have yet to start I’ll go ahead and devote the whole two days to getting that all sorted.

woo hoo!

Or maybe that’s an excuse? I am inundated with paper, as many people are. But I purge and organize and it keeps multiplying. I have a file cabinet, I have file boxes and file trays and baskets galore. And still there are papers everywhere. I don’t get it … why can’t I do this once and for all?