Mornin... Mornin... Every time I write about this topic, I get numerous emails and comments, so I believe many people struggle with this - the need to get rid of crap... Or the implementation of the K-I-S-S principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid)... :)...
And when we lose our battles?... We run the chance of ending up on a reality TV show about hoarders... LOL...
Not to make light of this psychological battle for I can SO understand some of the underlying causes --- an inability to decide what is valuable and what is not, then having the courage to get rid of it --- a CONSTANT bombardment of us from every aspect of our lives - incoming mail (snail and email), bills and papers, the need to keep receipts because most things don't do what they promise they will and a refund requires a receipt --- the IRS' regulations for holding onto receipts and papers --- incoming sales circulars and catalogs --- our backgrounds that were bred into us ("Don't be WASTEFUL")...
And then our lifestyles where we work SO hard each day so when we come home, we want to relax and not deal with more of the crap that invades our personal space at work and throughout life... I get it... I understand it... But it still drives me to distraction...
I think I already wrote in a previous Press about getting a NeatWorks scanner and using it... I have been struggling the past 10 days or so to get all of the bank statements, receipts and other assorted paperwork scanned and organized... It has been a challenge - of that there is no doubt...
But in my mind, the jury is 'in' on this challenge - it is worth the money, sweat and tears... The more I can scan and keep in a digital format, the less I will have to sift through from here on out in the future... And if I am diligent and stay organized, this new habit I am teaching myself will pay off big time... I touch something once to scan it, and I don't have to touch it again... I am finally looking forward to NEXT tax season... ... NOT... But not dreading it as much!
At least 30 years ago or more, I read something that had a profound effect upon me... It was during my American Express training and the point was that 99.99% is just not good enough... The piece pointed out where that .01% of someone not giving 100% could prove to be terribly wrong, if not fatal... I referred to this many times along the last 30 years and although I KNOW I would not have thrown that piece of paper away, I couldn't locate it... I searched on the Internet and didn't find it, although I searched several times in the past 10 years...
Going through some old papers a few weeks ago, I found it... I was in the midst of sorting what needed to be scanned and what could be trashed... Although it was just one piece of paper and 30 years lost, it was a major reality check to me why I should be teaching myself new habits and releasing the old ones... When I die, are my loved ones left behind going to search through each and every item of mine?... Of course not - they'll be thrown away for the most part... And added to the vast amount of stuff being loaded into landfills to pollute our planet even more... The great stuff along with the mundane and useless stuff...
I no longer wonder why we as a civilization have 'forgotten' some of the great things... (i.e. why we don't know how the pyramids were built... or that heart surgery was performed in the Amazon by native Indians centuries ago...)... It is because every civilization and its peoples get overwhelmed with CRAP on a day to day basis!...
Think about it... I'll sit and wait for you... :)
This morning when I opened up Thunderbird (the companion to FireFox that retrieves all of the email from any email addy), it gave me the notice of "1136 unread messages"... OMG... Facts are, I know there are even more that I have previously read and am storing for one reason or another...
Something has GOTTA give or I will NEVER have a free hour to just relax and enjoy life... LOL... As I waited for my computer to completely boot up, I started thinking about this... And decided that what didn't need to be digital simply needed to go... i.e. as in wearing out the DELETE button on my keyboard... :)
I put an external drive on my computer a few weeks back - to be used simply for storage purposes and realized it was 4 times more space than my computer's drive is... Things that simply too important to lose are backed up automatically each day with Carbonite and it is WELL worth the $5.00 a month for peace of mind ~~~ the websites, documents, etc...
But what about emails that you keep?... Because of the code they are written in and where they come from, you just can't hit 'save' and the entire email is kept... This has been a problem in the past for me... I have tried only having one email addy (this was a disaster as too much came through that I had to manually sort out)... And I have tried having numerous email addys (which has worked out) but each email addy has sub-categories or issues, so it becomes a monster eventually... And if you have to save something? You have several places to look for it...
Last year I started using PDF995 and ended up buying it after liking the free product... This morning I tried it on emails that needed to be archived and saved for one reason or another and it works - WELL... Kept the email addy in place in case I need to use that again without adding it to my address book, kept the email intact with the date, etc... I saved the pdf files on the external drive with the belief if one system failed, the chances that both systems fail is remote and highly unlikely... It is the best I can do, ya know?
So I continue on my quest for a "C-F" life... (CRAP-free)... I vow to not print out another thing unless I absolutely have to, and maybe I will save some trees before I die... If not, I will save myself some time searching for things - and the computer will search for it instead of me shifting through printed sheets piling up at my computer!...
A year from now on the next Earth Day there lies the possibility I will achieve personally what we as a family have in trash recycling - a reduction by 75% of what is going into the landfills!
As Always (with tongue-in-cheek),
The Lady
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