I must have, at my command, enough paper to provide recycled bags to Red Apple, Trader Joe's and QFC for a year at least. All of those bits of paper in brown bags, at one time or another, I felt must be saved.
I suspect there are piles of papers similar to mine all over Seattle because it's rainy, dark and dreary, and what is there to do but clean out all those paper that you thought about doing all through the warmth and sunshine of summer.
SPREADING OUT
This week, I took on the chore because I have not been able to walk across the room without great risk of breaking my neck.
I tend to work on the floor to avoid tipping over my chair when the piece of paper I need proves to be just 3 inches beyond my reach but not beyond my determination and I reach - and then fly to the floor. So starting from the floor to begin with is a safety measure.
It's a good system, but it does have its drawbacks: The phone rings and I can't find it, as I have buried it beneath the magazines I've been saving in case I want to read them in the next three years or else I want something in the file cabinet, which involves getting off my knees and onto my feet - a tedious process, to say the least.
But the prime reason I work on the floor is that I can spread my piles about from wall to wall. There is scarcely a clear space on the floor or chair.
It was so much easier when I could just fling useless paper into the fireplace before I had time to weigh the value of keeping priceless receipts for the ages. Fireplace disposal avoided so much weighing, pondering and filing - just toss it and watch it disappear forever.
Since such an option is no longer an option, I file....
FILING TAXES
I tell myself that I'd like to be better prepared for income-tax time, but I discovered as I went through files that I wasn't sure which taxes were for what year. I paid my taxes every year, but that doesn't mean I removed the data from the files as one normally does.
No, in the last few years, I tried a new approach.
Why not keep supporting paperwork in the file with the supporting date for the following year instead of putting them in an envelope and store them in my locker as I had in years gone by? Because that method worked well, and so it had to be changed - that's why.
So, like Topsy, the files just grew and grew, and now I optimistically hope to make sense out of them.
A FILE FOR EVERYTHING
However, my files are more than high finance. I have a file for new films that are opening that I must see - only many of the reviews I have saved are dated 2006. So it's empty the file and on to the video store.
I have a file for books I want to read - a bulging file.
Reviews from papers and magazines, comments of friends, lectures and for reasons I can't possibly imagine all have been stuffed in the file, and not one I have read. Maybe someday, but then maybe it's empty-file time and begin anew.
I have files for gifts that seemed brilliant at the time, but I bypass it when the occasion arrives.
Files for sightseeing, files for maps.
I have a guarantee file - every guarantee for every product I have purchased, though many of the items themselves no longer are part of my life.
And this is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
Is it an obsession or common sense?
I'm even thinking of making a file of information about the other files.
Whichever it is, I regret the day I first heard the words, "You just have to get organized."
