November 4, 2009
Dear Everyone:
I opened my mail box this evening and found my
first Holiday Catalog (L.L. Bean from whom I don’t believe I’ve ever
purchased anything.) The
stores don’t even wait until
Halloween to start decorating for
Christmas
these days. Hope springs
eternal.
Last weekend I actually found some time to work on
the stuff in the second bedroom (also known as the “catchall room”.)
I dragged a large paper bag, containing the paper files from 2004
to be shredded, and the
shredder out to the living room.
I turned on some movie on the TV and shredded during the
commercial breaks.
The bag began with the Utilities (power, cable,
garbage, phone bills.) Then
came
Tax Returns from 2004.
Obviously, when I dumped the files into the bag, they went in reverse
alphabetical order. When I
started running across paperwork from when I bought first my condo in
Years ago, I kept my files in one of those
expanding file pockets with a section for each month.
After a few years, I just dumped the old file pocket into the
dumpster. One time, I
realized that the registration for my car was in the one I’d just
dumped. Luckily, it was near
the top and I was able to extricate it fairly easily.
It was also long before the art of “dumpster-diving”.
When “Jeannie” gave me her roll top desk in the
late 1980’s, I started using manila folders and filed by subject rather
than by month. At the end of
a year, I would move the folders from one drawer to another, then into a
cardboard file box, then into another box, by which time I would pull
everything out of the folders and re-use them for the current year.
I also started using a shredder as the art of dumpster-diving had
begun.
When I moved to my new place, I didn’t have time to
deal with shredding and just brought the bag full of 2004 records along
with everything else. And,
since I was forced to give up the roll top desk, I had to find a new
place to put all these records.
I went to one of the Big Office Supply Warehouse
Stores and bought colored plastic file boxes, a different color for each
year. They do require
hanging folders, which I don’t like on principle because the folders
take up about one-third of the space inside the boxes.
However, there is still plenty of room in each box.
And they stack very easily.
Next year, when it’s time to “rotate the files”,
I’ll empty the hanging folders for 2006, making sure to move anything
that still needs to be kept into 2007.
Then I’ll use that file box for 2010.
Hopefully by then, I’ll have finished shredding
2004 and 2005. Hope springs
eternal.
Love, as always,
Pete
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