It looks like there’s been an explosion in my home office.

Most of it is paperwork. At one point I started to reorganize my filing cabinet, but just ended up with piles all over the room. Part of the reason I have trouble filing promptly in the first place is because there is way too much stuff shoved in our small filing cabinet!

So when I started this reorganization (months ago!), I cleared out the bottom drawer so I could start fresh. And I wound up with this.

I sat down and started going through some of the files. Car insurance records from 2004 — from a provider I no longer use? Bank statements from 2001? (Remember when banks sent back checks in your statements? It was also pretty easy to tell when I started using online banking — no more large stack of checks!)

I still have a pile to shred but got through quite a bit. Very little actually needed to be saved.

I still have a long way to go, and it doesn’t make a big visual impact. But I’m moving in the right direction!