Beyond the South End

Spring Cleaning the Office

Since I’m in the Spring Cleaning mode and have already begun a new chapter of this blog, I thought I’d continue with my office and start throwing things again.

Unlike the hoarders on one of my favorite TV reality shows, I tend to be just the opposite. I throw. I have to be careful though, because in that pile of stuff may just be the one thing I’ll be looking for later on. Sometimes I look for stuff and can’t remember if I lost it in the flood or it went the way of one of my cleaning binges.

I’m organized in some ways and not so much in others. I maintain a filing cabinet of two drawers with file folders that don’t follow any logical order. I’m the only one who knows where to find what file. In my file cabinet I have all my medical information, statements etc. If you are on Medicare you will amass enough paper to wallpaper this office in no time. Once a year, usually in January, I go through the overflowing medical files for Medicare and AARP and throw out the previous year’s statements, so I can start all over again. If I saved all that stuff I’d have no room for anything else.

I do love my shredder…I do…I do. I could very easily burn out the motor in the shredder if I’m not careful. It does help with the identify theft problem though, especially if you live in an apartment complex like this one with central mail kiosks throughout. I never throw junk mail with my name and address on it in the convenient barrel they supply for the disposal of unwanted mail. Instead I take it home and shred the parts with my personal information on it. I never mail bills with a check in them in the convenient slot at the kiosk. I always find a real mail box to put them in. I still mail some bills because I really don’t like my personal financial information floating around on the internet.

I do the right thing environmentally and opt for paperless statements when I can—from the bank, financial stuff, and the like. The only grudge I have with that system is that when I try to print out my bank statement to keep for a while, I can’t get the whole page, but have to pencil in the last two numbers on the end, even if I reduce the size to 50%. What’s up with that?

Increasingly my doctors' offices send my prescriptions over the internet to my pharmacy so that I don’t have a paper prescription to carry home with me. That system is fine except for the fact that the pharmacy will immediately fill all the scrips sent to them in that manner and expect me to buy them all at once. Not happening. I have to call them and tell them not to fill them until I call them and tell them to do so. So not all systems are convenient at all times. At least the number of scrips I fill each month has decreased quite a bit.

I have “redone” this office at least three times in the three plus years we’ve lived here. The first time was when the cheap desk I bought just fell apart. I kept some of the boards and did the “bricks and boards” thing from college using old plastic coolers instead. I have my printer on one and a couple boxes I keep supplies in.

There is another smaller “table” behind it which I keep my paper cutter on, extra paper, etc. That table used to be on the left side of this art table I’m now using as a desk. On it I had my radio and some of the notebooks.

But wonder of wonders, dumpster diving one day produced a small table I could put beside my “desk” to hold my notebooks, notes, and other stuff I use to put together this blog every month. Therefore, a whole new arrangement was necessary. I moved the TV into the corner and put this new table next to me. The file cabinet that was also in that corner is now across the room next to an overflowing bookcase.  The radio sits atop it. No room for another bookcase, so that will have to do. The only glitch with this setup is that I have a dead zone between the small table and the TV in which everything I need falls and then becomes a pain to retrieve, like the pen I’m using at the moment. Will have to figure that one out later.

My important papers I keep in a metal box, titles to vehicles, passport, insurance policies, SS card, and copyrights. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you that. If someone now comes and steals away with my metal box and then asks ransom for it I’d be in a big pickle. When we left the flood, that box was in my hand. It’s served its purpose over the years and will continue to do so.

I have to remember to clean it out from time to time though. One time, after I had been away from Maine for over 20 years or so, I found the first car payment papers for my very first vehicle I bought on my own in that box. It was a big old Chevy I bought from my Uncle Exavier Winchenbaugh, who used to sell cars out of his house and garage over on Laurel Street. You may remember seeing his cars lined up along the street and part of South Main Street. He’d always be out there washing one of them.

At the same time, I also found my first teaching contract in Kittery, Maine for 1964. I think the total for the year (12 months) was something like $4,500. I probably should have kept that.

I do print out my blogs to keep in a blog notebook because I don’t trust that this computer will not devour all my hard work never to be seen again. As I revise a chapter of my new book, I print it out again. I do keep the book on a flash drive also. My first book, The South End, is stored on this computer as well as on a flash drive. I don’t need it in paper form, because…duh…I have the actual book.

The only thing I do hoard is notebooks of old blogs; email correspondence; research stuff; works in progress; etc. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to part with them.

The last project of Spring Cleaning in my office involved getting rid of all the extra paper on top of my new small desk so that I can find what I want when I’m writing. I keep yellow legal pads next to the keyboard to take notes on while I’m writing. When the information has been used and is no longer of use, I tear off that page and toss it. By the way, I recycle my printer paper by using both sides of the paper if it is going nowhere but into one of my notebooks.

So my office Spring Cleaning is done for this year. I guarantee you that I won’t be able to wait till next Spring to get rid of accumulated paper on my desk and, consequently, I'll start throwing again. Good luck with your own Spring Cleaning.

Thanks for listening.