I’m tackling my big paper pile o’ doom. This paper pile actually started accumulating while my dad was sick, and has slowly grown its own gravity field ever since. I’ve paid bills and taken care of enough odds and ends that it hasn’t actually made itself into an emergency, but enough little things went hidden and unnoticed that it has evolved into a problem. I could actually write kind of a serious post about how horrible and helpless it has made me feel for this past year and a half, but instead I’ll just say that I’ve been making an effort to tackle it every weekend morning for many, many weeks, but it rarely looks like I made much progress.
This morning I had a new strategy: to go through every single piece of paper and separate it into smaller piles according to as many categories as necessary, but I had to name the categories, put a post-it note on a file folder with the name of the category, and put each piece of paper into its respective file folder. Once that was done, I took the financial file and immediately went through everything, entering bills in Quicken, writing checks, and what-have-you. That’s done so now I’m taking a little break to check feeds and write this here post.
Next I’ll tackle the stuff to file, which will probably take me until breakfast and then I’ll end up going outside to garden. But at least I have a really scalable system to begin again on it next weekend. Whew.
Go Go Gadget organizer!
I have one of those in my office that’s been accumulating since 2001. I am SO scared of it.
-J
Very impressive progress! Chopping it into smaller pieces is really challenging but will hopefully make it a lot less overwhelming from here on out.
Congrats on bucking up to do the job, but today was probably the prettiest day I have ever seen in tennessee, and the though of doing paperwork just made me shudder. Go garden, sweetie, tackle the paperwork another day.
Or not.
Mack
Brilliant move, separating things into categories. It’s so much more efficient, for example, to deal with all filing at once.
You are doing so well just by organizing the piles! Do realize that this is a part of your grieving process, and as with all grieving, it’s taking it just one moment at a time. Be easy on yourself. It *will* get done!
Oh, I got out to the garden eventually and enjoyed the pretty day. I got started filing before 7 AM, so there was time for both indoor and outdoor stuff. 🙂
You know, I wondered if that was the case. If it’s any help, I can share with you the email newsletter article that got me to take this on with the right frame of mind. It’s from Llamagraphics, which is the company that makes the Life Balance software I use to manage my time. Their newsletter two weeks ago had an article in which the author talked about how spring made her want to open up her windows and listen to the birds outside, but opening the windows meant risking the piles of papers in her office being blown around. She then points out that the piles have been accumulating since she’s been facing issues of death and depression, what with her cherished aunt suffering from and then succumbing to cancer. She talks about how she has a news clipping from Susan Sontag’s death in that pile, and that facing the pile would mean figuring out where to file that clipping.
Anyway, she says more about it and it’s all very well said, and it hit just about as close to home as it could possibly hit. I read it, not realizing what I was about to read, while sitting in the Nashville airport waiting for my flight to New York the week before last. And I was weeping. The businessmen around me were probably really uncomfortable, but I felt a tremendous sense of relief that someone had pointed out to me why my paper pile was so very hard for me to overcome.
Oh here it is: I just found it online. The prose borders on purple but the genuineness of what she’s admitting about herself helps tone it down.
Anyway, good luck with your stack of papers. I know it won’t be easy, and I wish I could help you.
Thanks for pointing out that it’s part of the grieving process. I think I’m only starting to figure out how true that is.
I’m sorry I didn’t respond to this–I was actually too taken aback by the idea that I might be avoiding this for a reason other than the fact that it was a big job! That hadn’t occurred to me until I read this post.
The good news, though, is that this week I finally made myself just do it. I feel so mighty!
-J