Last night's clean out

Only two days into it and I'm realizing that we don't get much in the way of keep-worthy mail anymore, so for things to get backed up requires a remarkable amount of laziness on our part.

Last night's mail is here. You will notice the SI swimsuit issue, which AJ was very excited to receive and might file under his mattress, but it's not my problem anymore. A catalog, some flyers, some promotional crap. There was one student loan statement, which gets paid by automatic debit, so it's really not necessary to keep (and only $20,000 to go! Woo!)

I think that's pretty typical. At most we'll get three, maybe four things a week that need handling or keeping; the rest is junk or something we can look at once and toss. Most of our bills are paid online.

I cleaned out the little two-drawer filing cabinet last night. Took about twenty minutes to sort through the folders -- I wound up tossing the vast majority of stuff that was in there, because so much of it was so old. As I was going through it I tried to remember what the reason would have been in 2008 for keeping, say, bank statements from 2006. I can't think of any right now, but we did it, and I'm not sure why. Between the two of us, Peter's the keeper and I'm the tosser (heh) so I imagine it was Peter that wanted to hold onto that stuff. This isn't to say that he's never right about holding on to paperwork and whatnot -- it has occasionally paid dividends -- but for the most part, I think it's kind of pointless and silly to hold onto old bills and statements. Certain things -- contracts, records, major receipts -- it makes sense to keep, as long as they're put away. If they're not put away, when I get in the cleaning mood/frenzy/warpath, I don't give a damn what it is, if it's paper and doesn't say "DON'T THROW AWAY HAG" on it, I'm throwing it away or hiding it in a shameful closet box.