*mountains,* gandalf!

[alenxa_classic]

Q: What do you get when two writing bibliophiles get married?

A: Paper. MOUNTAINS of paper.

This effect is magnified by the following:
- a tendency of either party to collect mementos
- a desire or need for either party to be prepared to produce and/or compile detailed financial records
- either party having been involved in a publication of any kind
- either party having majored, at any time, in the humanities or social sciences
- a tendency for the family of either party to place special emphasis on greeting cards
- a desire to save money by clipping coupons
- either party dealing with more than two fiduciary entities
- magazine subscriptions

I swear, I don't know how we've been managing not to ski around the place, there's that much paper. Part of it is that most of the useless bits have been more-or-less neatly corralled; unfortunately, they've been hanging out with the useful bits for much too long. We must have shredded more than half a file box worth and sent another box and a half to recycle...and this is mostly my private collection. The most amazing thing is that somewhere in the middle, it completely stopped being stressful. It's not like the stress of full-on hoarding, where just tossing the insert from a 2001-era electric bill can cause tears; I've known for a looooong time that this would need to be done, but I haven't wanted to do it. It was just the scope of the project, which I always knew was huge and which was the biggest reason to put it off. I should have remembered My Brain 101: I don't like throwing things away, but I like organizing; and if I organize some stuff into a "Trash" pile it feels better than tossing it outright.

The downside of committing all this neatness is that some of my old notes, and the humor scrawled in the margins thereof, will end up pretty inaccessible. But it's a price I'm willing to pay. The storage unit is pretty close by if I really need to verify something or other.

Comments

[katyakoshka.livejournal.com]

You might want to cover the boxes in some plastic or a tarp, just in case you get flooding. My mom lost a ton of stuff to a water main break a couple years back, and she's still trying to figure out what-all it was that was destroyed.