Paperwork

4/1/2017

Happy April Fool's Day everybody.  No pranks here, mostly because I've ever been good at pranks, probably because I have never given much thought to them.

We had rain yesterday during the day.  Now, I love to go the mailbox to get the day's mail.  I don't know why this excites me so much, because these days our mail consists of: bills and junk mail.  Junk mail goes immediately into the shredder, particularly anything with our name on it.  Credit card applications for instance definitely need to be shredded.  Identity theft is real and happens to people every day.  As for the bills (sigh), I put them in a basket on the counter.  Jeff rounds them up and deals with them. My job, when I feel like it, is to file these bills.  I'm trying to do better about keeping paid bills down to a minimum.  Pretty sure I don't need to know how much my electric bill was in 2014.  Jeff maybe a pack rat, but I'm a paper hoarder.  If I keep a blind eye to the stack of paid bills, then I never have to address the issue.  For years, I kept paid bills and all manner of important documents in separate and labeled file folders in an actual filing cabinet.  This was how I did things for 40+ years and now I don't.  Instead, I have cardboard boxes in the closet of Jeff's office, appropriately marked for the bulk of bills:  ours, 4A's (the boys' computer company) and a file for bills for the airplane.  I also have a box for documents that I can't seem to find an appropriate home for.  

Every now and then, I'll go on a binge and realize that I have folders in the filing cabinet, for cars we no longer own and for dogs that have passed away.  And, I continually ask myself, why on earth would I keep these files?  Sentimentality perhaps?  I still have all the paperwork for the house we sold in California 31 years ago.  Pretty sure that file can now be destroyed.

Remember paper checks?  I used to keep a checkbook in my purse and wrote out said checks for things like groceries.  Our checkbook, where ever it is, had a "carbon" copy of the checks you wrote.  Now somewhere in this house, likely in a drawer, are perhaps years and years of these copies.  I should hunt them down and put them through the shredder.  Oh, but such a boring task.  Our checks these days are printed out on a printer (duh)!  

In my filing cabinet, I actually have two of them and you're saying to yourself, of course you do, I still have folders for the really important things: birth certificates, passports, tax returns and insurance policies for instance.  When we got married oh way back then, I told Jeff, because I was a secretary at the time, that I would handle the paperwork.  And in the early days of our marriage, there wasn't as much paper and what papers we had, were easily contained in our first filing cabinet.  Our first filing cabinet is a pale yellow color, and I loved it when we bought it.  Up until that time, I had only seen filing cabinets in their basic colors: black and gray.  Those colors remind me of winter, which is why I probably love the yellow cabinet. 

Starting at the end of each year, I label a file folder "x year tax" and into it, I put all the documents that I know Jeff is going to need to prepare our tax return.  Obviously, once the tax forms are filed, they go into that same folder and are placed in chronological order along with all the other tax folders.  I know you only have to keep them 7 years, but I may have a few more years than that!

With the closing of the battery business in 2013, there are two filing cabinets down in the basement that have the paperwork for each battery sold.  These papers can't be tossed in a trash can, because customers' data (address, credit card numbers) are on them.  And, someday, though not a priority now, I/we will deal with all that paper.  But, for the moment they are not in the way and are veeeeeeeeeeery low on the "to do" list, if they are even on that list!

So on a bright sunny day like we're having, the last thing I want to think about or do something about is paperwork.  It's not like it's going to go anywhere!  It's sort of like dust.  Dust will still be around when it annoys you to the point that you feel compelled to dust.  All I know is that the need to dust hasn't come over me quite yet!

Happy Saturday.

P