Paperless Statements and the Coming Apocalypse

After my successes with the bedroom and kitchen clutter, I decided that maybe it would be worthwhile to revisit a few other areas of chaos in my life. I have no illusions that I'll ever be "neat and tidy" but if I can find some new approaches, maybe I can keep the clutter down to manageable levels.

It doesn't hurt that I've been sick for the past week or so... which means I've been spending a lot of time watching mindless crap on Netflix... which means that I've just seen 27 episodes of Hoarding: Buried Alive, and am HIGHLY motivated to pare down my clutter!

So, the first stop was the desk. I don't know about you, but my desk is a clutter magnet. Try as I might, the paper just seems to pile up.

But Debbie made some very good suggestions in the comments of my last clutter post, so I figured maybe I'd give it a try. Essentially she suggested giving things a more convenient home. This made me realize that a big part of the reason that I dread filing papers is that for some reason the files I use the most were living in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet where I had to either squat or kneel down to reach them.

Now, it's not that my thighs couldn't use a few deep knee bends, but somehow, the added work of having to reach down there always meant that I put off filing the papers because it seemed like a hassle. Soooo... I simply swapped the contents of a few drawers and now it's MUCH easier to file things as they come in.

Of course, in the process of moving everything around I realized that many of the folders really needed a good purge. This, of course, led to a massive shred-a-thon... which would have been much easier if I had a better paper shredder which didn't require me to separate all of the pieces by hand. Oy!

Anyhow, by that point I was good and motivated to see what I could do to lessen the volume of paper coming into the house in the first place. I had set up most of my finances on automatic paperless payments years ago, but there were still a half a dozen accounts that either didn't have a paperless option, or didn't have one that provided good access to records at that time.

But with three sacks of shredded bill stubs, bank statements and assorted other crap as motivation, I decided that perhaps it was time to revisit the idea, and it turns out that the world of paperless statements has improved greatly in the 5 or 6 years since I last explored the options. Woo Hoo!

Off topic, but who stands there taking a picture while the puppy pees on your laptop?!?

Anyhow, I was ecstatic with my new discoveries and proudly called CatMan to tell him about my new paperless phone bills, utility statements, water bills, credit cards and retirement statements. And his response? "Hmmm... guess you'll be in trouble when the big solar storm comes and wipes out the entire electrical grid."

OK, not exactly the response I was hoping for, but I was intrigued. He proceeded to tell me about an article he had recently read saying that in 1859 there was a massive solar storm. It was so big, in fact, that the aurora borealis were visible as far south as Mexico and the Caribbean! And if such a storm happened today, it would likely wipe out the entire electrical grid, and it could take - no kidding - up to 10 years to get the power back on! Holy Moly!

Of course, I did have to point out that if the world was without electricity for 10 years we'd probably be talking about the end of civilization as we know it, which would tend to render things like access to back copies of the phone bill a somewhat moot point. Ha! Score one for the CatLady!

At any rate, for the moment I'm enjoying my clean, clutter free desk. We'll see if I can maintain it, and I guess when the solar storm apocalypse comes, I'll just have to find some other source of kindling!