A week ago yesterday my husband’s car stopped working. The engine would run, but the car wouldn’t move. After spending alot of time on the phone Friday (to the point that it was beeping because the battery was dying) talking to different shops, the insurance company, towing company, and my husband we decided to scrap the car.
Our Ford Taurus was almost 10 years old and had over 150,000 miles on it. It was going to cost too much to figure out the problem and there was no guarantee the “fix” would last. I told the shop another tow truck was coming to bring our Taurus home and we were thinking to sell it for scrap. He wanted to buy it and we liked his offer so that solved a potential problem for us. Now we needed to find the title to the car.
(Insert theme song to “Jaws”).
Have you ever noticed how some problems in life just seem to exist for the purpose to point out other, bigger underlying problems in life?
Or is it just me?
Well. Here’s my story. Its been no secret to me that paper clutter is my nemesis as is my lack of organizing it. I hate all this paper clutter. Bills, receipts, ads, coupon books that magically get mailed to you just because you live in “the area”… I can’t keep up. And when you have no really good effective way of organizing and purging these things as needed, well, it just stinks. Paper piles up faster than I can figure out how to handle it. And so my story goes.
In my hot pursuit of said “title” I discovered multiple areas of “storage” for bills, receipts, and pay stubs. I’m talking about finding hospital statements from when my oldest was born almost eight years ago- among other things. So all this car business has inspired me to deal with this.
I was sorting and purging in an effort to find the title to the car. Which we never found. We just went to the Clerk of Courts and paid $16 to get a copy and have it transferred into the new owner’s name.
So while life has been a bit uprooted (in more than one area) with our one car dilemma we are also dealing with getting our paper crap clutter in order. I’m still short on figuring out how to organize this area of life efficiently so I can deal with it effectively. If you have any grand ideas I’d welcome them. What works for you that might work for me?
P.S. I need a simple plan 🙂
Rachel at Small Notebook recently wrote a post about paper clutter. I am not savvy enough to post a link. Maybe her method would inspire you, it did me!
Hmm. I’ll think on that one. Might be a possibility, thanks!
Yeah, thats my Cosi hair-do 😉 Thanks for the tips. I’m partially doing some of that now, not enough obviously.
Here’s what you do: the minute you get your afternoon mail, while still holding it in your hands, toss ALL junk mail; keep only the important stuff. When you get a monthly bill that needs paid, put it with the other “bills”. Pul all receipts into the designated file immediately. As soon as the boys are finished EACH day with school, put their papers into the designated baskets. Immediately after you are finsihed with what you are working on at the moment, put everything away before getting something else out. Have a file for EVERYTHING of importance . By the way; I LOVE your hair-do!!
Have you tried using a simple 12-slot file? Just file everything, no matter what, by it’s month… only 12 files to go through each year in order to find what you need.
Sorry to hear about your car trouble!