Sunday kicked off another spurt of activity on our house project(s). Matt got the storage room that will become our master bedroom closet emptied and painted. The minor problem being that I'm the one who has to figure out where all the stuff goes during my Sam-free moments. Now that we know what the function of all our rooms is going to be, and we know how we live in our house, it's easier to decide what stays and what goes. Having no garage or storage space to speak of makes it even easier.
Still, though, I have such a hard time getting rid of things! I cringed when it became obvious that most of the boxes up there where full of my files, newspapers and, yes, magazines. Cringe.
Boxes full of: Pay stubs from every check of every job we've had since 1998; Files and files of notes from interviews for stories that ran ages ago; a user manual for every cell phone I've ever owned; drafts of stories I'd forgotten I'd started (that part was actually pretty fun to find).
I promised myself I'd do 15 minutes a day going through and purging those files until I had just the ones I want in my filing cabinets. Luckily, I got a huge head start today when Retta took Sam for the morning and I, for once, stayed focused on the task at hand. I did a lot of Google searches that started like this: "How long do I have to keep credit card statements? Phone and utility bills?" Because I had a copy of every bill I've paid since, you got it, 1998. Many, many of them where in one of several files labeled: "Things to file."
It was hard not to read every letter I came by and every story I'd started. But don't worry, I made a new pile for the stuff I want to read later.
