New Filing System

Dear Friends and Family,

I'm sorry. Life, when simplified, can be a little boring.

I spent yesterday's drive thinking about how to continue the uncluttering process.

Do I continue haphazardly? Do I focus on a single room? Do I go for big things? Little things? Things hiding? Things hiding in plain sight?

See? Yawn.

I guess I'll continue haphazardly for now until a better plan presents itself.

Oh, but wait, I can share a nugget of inspiration.

I have a new filing system. Yep.

What's our current filing system?

We file everything by topic. American Express bills in one folder. Water bills in another. Medical stuff in a third. Etc.

Then, every year or thereabouts, we go through some of the folders and throw out old papers. The ones we forget to go through pile up like little monsters and then breed more papers.

New system?

First sort will be keep forever or keep for now. What's a keep forever? It could be the test results from a doctor's visit. It could be a password for logging onto a retirement account. It could be tax returns. Keep forever. What's keep for now? Everything else.

Then, the keep forever papers get sorted by topic and filed. These should be few and far between. Everything else gets sorted by time. Q2 2012. Then, when the time comes to shred, I can grab the folder and shred away. There's no going through folder by folder to get the old stuff - reassessing as I go. There's no skipping folders because they've grown too big. There's no thinking at that point. Just grab and shred.

Now, the one risk I run is that I need a paper in the keep for now pile. Well, it's there, but it may take a little longer to find. Now, the chances of needing a paper? Slim. That's why it's a risk worth taking.


Cheers!
mouse