This is why I'll never be an Adult

For the last 9 months or so, any piece of paper I couldn't deal with right away, for whatever reason, got stuffed into a cabinet, or a bin under the cabinet. The intention was to go through it every 3-4 weeks, get everything settled and move on. It has recently spilled elsewhere. One reason I needed a weekend to deal with taxes is digging the relevant stuff out of this stash. I think I've got most of it, and the rest I can print off the computer at work tomorrow.

Of course, now my living room looks like this:

(TBI= to be installed, aka in a box on the porch because I have enough projects to last a month of sundays.)

Fortunately, I only had a couple of late payments and they didn't lead to significant charges. One reason I could deal with the pile fairly quickly is thanks to the wisdom in "Taming the Paper Tiger" about not bringing crap into the house in the first place. I drive to my mailboxes, and strip out all the filler paper (unwanted ads, extra pages, unwanted checks, useless envelopes) and just keep the truly necessary stuff. Since most of my important stuff is set up on autopay or goes to my UPS mailbox, I open it at lunch and pay it right away if I can. Probably 90% of the delivered bulk goes straight in the trash. And 70% of it is unsolicited so "going paperless" wouldn't help much and only let me miss more deadlines at this point.

So. I pretty much have what I need to get my taxes done, submit my last $400 from my health care account to be reimbursed, and make the recipe I made up for the Trader Joe's lemon pepper pasta that I've looked for twice so far. (Boil LP pasta, toss over medium heat with 1T TJ's olive tepanade, glug of favorite cooking oil, diced 1/3 avocado, 1 Dorot frozen garlic cube, & salt until heated through.)

But it's not pretty. And this is why I'm not living up to my potential. Hopefully once I get my cabinets in place and have file drawers that aren't hidden behind a sofa, things will improve. Stay tuned but don't be holding your breath.