What Was I Thinking?

So, those 4 large Rubbermaid bins that I thought were full of bed linens? Not exactly. One did contain bed linens, which I had washed and folded and put in there sometime in November. They were from Future Vet's room and since he's gone until May, that's how I decided to keep the cat hair (and hairballs) off his bed linens. Two of the other boxes contained clothes that Future Vet left behind. I had also washed and folded and put those away not too terribly long ago. My memory is obviously not what it used to be.

I moved those 3 bins out of the garage and into Future Vet's bedroom, so I guess that counts as clearing out the garage. Sort of.

The fourth bin had only one thing in it -- a large pot that I bought to cook meat for the dogs in. I'll probably keep that around until we move, just in case one of the dogs gets really sick again and needs special food.

The upshot of the preceding activity was that I really didn't feel as if I had done anything today in terms of getting rid of a box, a bag, a shelf or a pile. So I gritted my teeth and decided to tackle THIS box:


That box is full of receipts. All kinds of receipts -- grocery stores, vet bills, online purchases, garden and house purchases, car expenses, you name it. There are also bank statements and credit card statements (all paid) in that box.

At one time in my life, I was obsessive about keeping track of where every penny went. I double-checked receipts against credit card statements and kept them together. I filed bills relating to the cars, to medical and insurance expenses, to the animals. That time probably ended about 3 years ago, but the saving of receipts obviously didn't end.

The Wizard and I had a series of conferences on what needed to be kept and what should be shredded. The answer was: very little needs to be kept; everything else needs to be shredded. Good thing we have a heavy-duty shredder.


I started going through the box, putting things like bank statements, credit card bills, some animal records, and a few other things we were saving into one pile and putting everything else into a "to be shredded" pile.

After 30 minutes of this activity:

And after one hour:


Gee, that sure doesn't look like much progress, does it? I was looking at each receipt to make sure that it wasn't something I needed to save, but my glances were pretty perfunctory. And still the progress was slow.

After an hour and a half:


Two bags full of shredded receipts and that box STILL looks full. Something very odd is going on here.

Two hours into this activity, the shredder objected:


And the box still didn't look appreciably emptier:


Since the shredder obviously needed a nice, long rest, I started just kept piling up the receipts to shred instead of shredding them a little at a time. After another half hour or so, however, I realized that the dogs were clamoring to be fed and that I also needed a nice, long rest.

After two and a half hours of sorting, this is what my box looks like:


At least it now looks as if some progress was made! Media Guru has me watching "Fringe" on Tuesday nights, so I think I'll continue going through the receipts as I watch.

Worst comes to worst, I'll finish tomorrow.

Some time later....

I sorted through receipts while watching "Fringe". Then I convinced the Media Guru to watch the episode of "Battlestar Galactica" that he had DVRed. At the end of all that TV viewing, I could finally see the bottom of the box:


I figured "what the hey", might as well finish it off. So I did.


Of course, all that sorting plus the overheated shredder led to a large amount of papers waiting to be shredded. Tomorrow.



And there are still some papers to be filed, or winnowed out a little further. And where better to put those papers than in a handy empty box?


The upshot of all this work was that I did indeed get through a box today. And I learned that it is faster to go through a box of papers if you do not shred as you go. On the other hand, there is still a lot of shredding to do. Tomorrow.