Mining Rod's History

This weekend's theme was 'Radical Slash and Burn' in the Poitras/Chudyk household. I spent last week going through my papers and purging/refiling, and oddly, I stumbled on 5 poems I had written about 6 years ago that I have no recollection of writing, which just goes to show how important it is to get one's life in order. So, with that in mind, I hunted high and low for Rod's papers on Friday, and starting yesterday, we did a first-round sort/purge.

Today, while Rod was out in Vegreville helping with the construction of the chair-lift, I tackled the piles of bills and statements left from yesterday, leading to another massive purge. Well, this wasn't enough for me, and I finally took the initiative and emptied Rod's drawer in the filing cabinet in hopes of getting it sorted/purged. I'm pleased to say that it's about 40% complete and I totally reformed his filing system...or rather, I created a coherent one for him. Poor Rod's paper trails were "organized" chronologically, and I use this term in the loosest possible manner. Complete messes of paper were just stuffed into file folders and then shoved in the drawer. First I had to sort all that paper into file type. Then each stack, and there were about 10 stacks, had to be organized chronologically before being filed. It sounds anal, but it's actually the most basic system of filing.

Well, Day 2 is over, and it was a complete success. Tomorrow I'll tackle Rod's personal papers and get them squared away, but I can't do anything for the mountain of paper he has for work projects. I'll just have to slowly urge him to deal with those in an organized manner, and once those are done, Rod's life on paper is completely organized and SANE.

But the part I'm the happiest with is that all of this was done without a fight from Rod. He's quite the packrat and he's super protective of his stuff, so the fact that we've cut his paper trail literally in half is SUPER-fantastic, and I'm so proud of the work he put in and getting it ready for me to file.

I've also started yet another pile of things that can be donated, though it's mostly odds and ends, nothing super significant like clothes, pots and pans, housewares. Now that I have the time to really deal with our house, there are going to be a lot of changes. I can't do anything about new dishes/kitchenware or new furniture until I get a job and get paid, but for now at least, the battle against clutter is slowly being won, one battle at a time.