Day 4, Barbara: Sometimes File is the only way to unscramble Life

I just can’t stand it anymore.

The snowpile of receipts, bills, coupons, bills, catalogs, bills, business cards, bills, letters, bills, newspapers, and bills that my desk has become. That’s spread  somehow to my coffee table. Kitchen table. Dining room table. And we’re supposed to be shooting for a paperless world? When it spills over onto the sofa or the bathroom countertop, it’s time to act.

It’s time to file.

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

For me, that means hauling out the pocket folders, labelmaker, stapler, Sharpie and highlighter, hanging files, and shredder. And the Gripper bags and the outsized garbage can from the laundry room. No ordinary trash receptacle will do. That cute little basket my daughter once labeled with a History subject sticker in her college dorm room, which I’ve repurposed for my home office all these years, won’t serve today. No, this is a job for Hefty and Rubbermaid.

Bring it on, baby. I roll up my sleeves, clear the decks on a folding picnic table, and start separating the sheep from the goats. Paid bills in this stack, unpaid ones in that. Tax-deductible receipts for the business, over here. Personal, there. Receipts from Starbucks, Coldwater Creek, Walmart (oops, that ream of paper’s a business expense), Chuck E. Cheese for grandson’s birthday party, trash. Receipts from the liquor store, debatable. Maybe under Deductible/Medical.

One time when I’d used up every available flat surface in the house I had to resort to the patio table for sorting. Everything was going fine until I ran in to catch the phone and an afternoon shower blew in. The piles got drenched. I read somewhere that you can reclaim wet books by freezing them, letting the dry air eventually suck out the moisture. Two months later my son came over to help cook dinner. “Mom, why you have these, um, stacks of receipts in the freezer?”

And about all those dead-tree records in the first place, you might ask. I am a committed citizen of the digital era, after all. I am dedicated to online bill pay. Much neater than dropping an old-fashioned check into the black hole of the USPS. But if someone’s going to charge me money, I want them to request it in a more tangible manner than a few pixels that might disappear into the spam ether and leave me with no reminder a due date ever existed. I’ve also wondered, when given the opportunity to “Go Green!” and get my confirmation by email, how it’s supposed to help if I have to print it out on a full sheet on my own printer?

Fundraising appeals, alumni newsletters, book catalogs, One-Day-Only Sales, invitations to gallery openings and community theatre and pet adoption days . . . I meant to see if my schedule and purse could accommodate them, all those weeks ago, I really did. Now they’re consigned to the Circular File.

The archaeological dig progresses, each layer of slick circulars, each tiny, crumpled scrap of thermal roll peeled back to reveal the shards of my existence. I expect at any moment to come upon a Plainview Point or a pre-Columbian midden. Yep, that bad. I hope I do not unearth an invitation to some friend’s wedding that took place last month. I did, once, uncover an unrecognized sender’s nondescript envelope that, when opened, contained a twenty-dollar check. “Congratulations on being awarded Honorable Mention in our writing competition.” Well, that ought to teach me.

Soon I can see the wood surface of the kitchen table gleaming through. By the time I’m down to the home stretch, I’ve located my missing silver earring, a dollar bill (bonus!), and a flyer promoting a “Get Your (Second) Act Together” empowerment seminar for women. Yesterday.

Too bad. It’s History. And File has neatly transmogrified to Life again.