Happy Boxing Day

So I don’t actually observe Boxing Day but this post is going to be about boxes nonetheless.  Different type of boxing all together. 

I spent the day being productive.  I have a <ahem> few piles of paperwork that I was determined to see filed before the year’s end.  So I lugged them all out and deposited them in the living room where I could spread out. 

People, I was at it for *eight hours* and I’m still not done.  I do have everything categorized and now sitting in neat little piles on the guest room bed (the filing cabinet is neatly tucked away in the guest room which is probably why I never file.  Out of sight out of mind and all) waiting to be put in its final, appropriate spot. 

The things that I already had folders for were promptly filed but I have a few new categories that I need labels for and, my big dilemma, others that need special storage boxes.

Do you know it is near impossible to find storage boxes for canceled checks?  I went to Staples and to Office Max and neither had any.   I must have opened about 500 bank statements today so I could put the statements in one pile and the canceled checks in another and toss the envelope.  I’m seriously filing statements from 1995.  This is the extent of my procrastination.  I’ve moved twice since then.  I just keep moving my piles from house to house.

Anyway – back to the storage box issue – I guess no one actually gets canceled checks anymore.  I know I don’t – in fact I hardly even write checks.  I guess I’ll go to Target and get some photo boxes.  That should do the trick. 

I did find some interesting things amongst all the flotsam and jetsam of paperwork.  My old passport from 1974 (I bear a striking resemblance to Vincent Van Patten in that picture).  Every driver’s license I’ve ever had except the first one.  My old math notebook from 1970 when I was attending the German Embassy School in Ankara, Turkey.   My word problems are all written out in my ten year old script in German.  I have no idea what any of it means any more.

My sons are 20 and 21 now and I was filing away their report cards from elementary school.  Each and every one of the oldest’s has some version of "very bright but needs to shut up and mind his own business when in class…" 

Tons of photos in the piles too.  A picture of me on a knee board on Lake Englebright looking tan and slim.  Wonder where that version of me went.  Filed away for sure. 

I was rather dreading the chore but actually it was fun to look back at my life, at least the bits I deemed worthy to save. 

Now I vow to keep on top of things.  Even if I just file once a year it won’t be nearly the chore it was today.