So, we’ve got the new house and it is stuffed with boxes. Still.
It is a slow process getting everything unboxed. Part of the problem is as I unbox things I need to put them somewhere. I’m trying to get things on the built-in shelves but to get to them I have to get the boxes out of the way. To get the boxes out of the way I need to unpack them so I can break the boxes down and move them somewhere else. It’s a vicious circle.
I have managed to get most of the kitchen done. I have found a few more boxes as I’ve gone along that have kitchen stuff in them and I’ll get to them soon.
I’ve also managed to at least open all the boxes in the study and put away about three quarters of them. Lots of papers and office supplies. The papers will need to be filed, although I suspect some of them can probably be tossed in File 13 (or the circular file for those of you outside the U.S.). I suspect there are things in the file cabinet that can probably go in File 13 as well. Once we get more settled I’ll have to do a deep dive into the filing system and get old junk cleared out.
Speaking of the filling cabinet – once I get it set up again, NO ONE is allowed to touch the filing again other than me. Twice in my life I’ve had everything completely disrupted by people trying to ‘help’ me organize my filing.
Once was the wife, back before she was the wife, who came over to help clean my house. She brought her daughter along and since I was at work, she suggested the daughter work on the filing. I told them OK, and explained exactly how to file things. I had categories of folders (auto, house, utilities, etc.) and inside each folder I had an envelope of all the bills for the year. So, for instance, in the Utilities folder I had an envelope for all my electric bills for the year. (The envelope would have the year written on the outside). All she had to do was pick up an electric bill, find the envelope for them in the Utilities folder and put the bill in the envelope. But the wife wanted to be helpful and completely reorganized my filing system so it made more sense to her, with the drawback being it made no sense to me. It took me years to recover from that.
The second time was again while I was out of the house when the wife, who was now the wife, and a friend of ours were cleaning the house. The wife set our friend to working on the filing. Our friend decided to ‘help’ and took everything out of order, out of the folders they were in, them put everything back in alphabetical order. Sometimes it was in alphabetical order by the original category name and other times by alphabetical by the bill name. So we might have a ‘auto’ folder with some material about our cars and a separate folder for the company we have our gas credit card through. Not quite as disruptive as the first time but still disruptive. And I still can’t find everything.
I have uncovered a few boxes of books. Fortunately I can get to the bookshelves so I can get those unboxed, put on the shelves and the boxes broken down and moved out of the way.
The master bedroom has barely been touched. Getting clothes out of the boxes is problematic because we can’t get to the dresser or closet to put them away. I may have to move some of the clothes boxes out of the room as I clear out some space in the rest of the house. Then I can unbox and get the clothes put away where they belong.
And then there’s all the photo albums. The wife used to be a professional photographer so she has photographs of darn near any event in her lifetime. They’ll all have to go somewhere, most likely some of the built-in bookshelves once I can get to them.
It’s just that I look around and there a still so … many … boxes. I’ll get them all eventually.
I hope your life is well organized, my Hordeling. If not, you might want to start on getting rid of the clutter now. Waiting until you’ve bee on the planet several decades and doing it then will be more work than you’re going to want to put in. Save yourself the headache and do it now. Your future self will thank you.
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