-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Organizational Challenge update: day 9



Hmm. Day 9. Um. What happen to all those other days??

Day 4 had K. home from school and we baked. It also saw A. flying back into town. A little bit was done, but not much.

Days 5 and 6 were spent doing Easter stuff.

Day 7 had K. home from school again. I think we played more than we cleaned.

Day 8. That was yesterday. OH! I worked on a shoe box overflowing with papers yesterday. I shredded more than I put into the filing cabinet. A lot more. There was no valid reason I could think of to be keeping electric bills from 2002, water bills from 2004, and bank statements from 1998. I didn't fuss (much) with the files in the drawer except to pull some old records out and shred them. I finished putting together my closed out files. (Closed out files are credit cards that have been paid off and closed. The statements get transferred from file folders to clasp-sealing envelopes with the name of the card on the outside where the return address would go and the word "CLOSED" in big bold letters. They're saved until such a time as I see fit to shred them, and even then I keep the final 3-6 months of the statement in case there's ever a question about me having paid it off.) The most fussing I did was putting the statements/bills in chronological order as I filed them.

Day 9... that's today. I don't know yet what I'll be doing. Probably much the same as yesterday; picking a box/section and going through it. At this point, there's little more I can do. It's tedious and boring, but that's why I have I-Tunes on the computer. And if I'm really good (or finding myself checking my email a little too often), I might allow myself an episode or two of MacGyver later while I'm sorting.

All in all, the progress is slow going. The idea of "pull everything out and then sort it" really doesn't apply to what I'm sorting/cleaning because it's already "out". That's the biggest problem; it's never found a home within my home so I have to decide what to do with some of this stuff. Most of it, I know, can be shredded, filed, or thrown away, but for security reasons I can't just pick up a pile and throw it away. I have to sort through every page to see if there's a social security number on that pay stub or if that missing document I've been looking for is somewhere in the mix.

The same goes for boxes. I don't know what's in the remaining boxes, not because it's been so long since they've been packed, but because I didn't pack them. And as boxes have been opened in the past, it has seemed as if whoever packed them just randomly threw stuff in before sealing it up. There's no rhyme or reason to any of it. And I'm still missing my Bible, the one I had when I was a teen. I've yet to find the box whoever packed it put it in. It's either in one of these final boxes, or it was in the box that A. didn't go through before he threw away a few years back while I was at work. I'm starting to think a lot of my missing items were in that box.

I am finding more and more books every day, and it occurred to me last night as I pulled another half dozen books out of nowhere that I really need to give myself time to read again. Lately my only reading time has been when A. is out of town and K. and I have reading nights or when I'm in the bathroom (even then I don't get to read much because there's this weird and slightly annoying rule in effect about not letting mom being in the bathroom by herself). Realizing how much I've been neglecting my reading time (and myself in general) had me making up a new schedule last night. I'm still tweaking it, but it's coming along nicely. In theory. We'll see how it goes and tweak as needed. My biggest question at the moment though (aside from why am I getting up at 430 in the morning??) is where in the blue flamed abyss am I going to put all these books until I read them?? A fort made of books is looking better and better every day.

So, all in all, I guess I'm chipping away at things. Today is day 9. I have 22 days left. Looking around, I know I'm making progress, but I also know I have to work harder if I'm going to make the deadline.

Which means I should end this post, gear up a play list, and get to work.


1 comment:

Debi said...

Good for you! Sounds like you're plugging away nicely!
And by the way, I do think that the barging into the bathroom thing is simply hard-wired into every child!
Continued good luck!