27 December: Paperwork! OY!
Everytime I have mail, I throw out the gar-baagh, leave the mail I can deal with immediately on my desk or the coffee table in front of my couch, and drop the remainder into a box on top of the file cabinet, to be taken care of later.
So, FanSee, how is that working out? About as well as you think; i.e., poorly. As well as I can remember, sometime just before Halloween, I went through the top layer and took care of anything urgent or easy. I knew that the items that had sunk to the bottom of the box were ignorable...so I ignored them. I went through the same process sometime around Thanksgiving, but even less thoroughly. I just looked for bills that had to be paid and called it a day, all the while knowing that box was outta control. So now we are at the end of December. I looked at my To Do Box and knew that Something Must Be Done.
Today I started doing it. In between making and eating breakfast and dinner and cleaning up afterwards, and talking on the phone with four members of my family (two more than once) and a friend I haven't talked to in a year, I excavated all the way down to the bottom of the box. What I dredged up went into four piles: trash, back-in-the-box, year-end charity, and action items.
--Trash is pretty self-explanatory and included items with expired deadlines (the best of outcomes), items that on closer inspection I am no longer interested in, and items that should have been trashed on receipt.
--Back-in-the-box items are an odd bunch, including an address list, an ad from Fios offering me the deal of the year to switch from Xfinity, and a DVD labeled "Family Pictures 2000-2001." They all need to be investigated, but their volume is small.
--I have a big stack of request from donations, most from organizations I've supported in past years. I haven't even gone through this stack to toss out duplicated solicitations from the same charity, and I think when I've done that, I'll halve the height of my pile. Tomorrow I want to write the checks I'm sending out written and in the mail.
--Action items include current bills which I'll pay next week, a notice that my long term care insurance company is changing its billing structure (I need to talk to my financial advisor about that), and bank statements I need to review before filing.
Not an exciting day, but important. FanSee
So, FanSee, how is that working out? About as well as you think; i.e., poorly. As well as I can remember, sometime just before Halloween, I went through the top layer and took care of anything urgent or easy. I knew that the items that had sunk to the bottom of the box were ignorable...so I ignored them. I went through the same process sometime around Thanksgiving, but even less thoroughly. I just looked for bills that had to be paid and called it a day, all the while knowing that box was outta control. So now we are at the end of December. I looked at my To Do Box and knew that Something Must Be Done.
Today I started doing it. In between making and eating breakfast and dinner and cleaning up afterwards, and talking on the phone with four members of my family (two more than once) and a friend I haven't talked to in a year, I excavated all the way down to the bottom of the box. What I dredged up went into four piles: trash, back-in-the-box, year-end charity, and action items.
--Trash is pretty self-explanatory and included items with expired deadlines (the best of outcomes), items that on closer inspection I am no longer interested in, and items that should have been trashed on receipt.
--Back-in-the-box items are an odd bunch, including an address list, an ad from Fios offering me the deal of the year to switch from Xfinity, and a DVD labeled "Family Pictures 2000-2001." They all need to be investigated, but their volume is small.
--I have a big stack of request from donations, most from organizations I've supported in past years. I haven't even gone through this stack to toss out duplicated solicitations from the same charity, and I think when I've done that, I'll halve the height of my pile. Tomorrow I want to write the checks I'm sending out written and in the mail.
--Action items include current bills which I'll pay next week, a notice that my long term care insurance company is changing its billing structure (I need to talk to my financial advisor about that), and bank statements I need to review before filing.
Not an exciting day, but important. FanSee