Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Dishwasher and Filing

This will be a very quick entry for various reasons:

1) I'm in the Library
2) There is a 'Scheduled Outage at 400PMPDT' whatever that means
3) It's too hot (Even though it's a hell of a lot cooler than last week for any international fans of mine out there who haven't got a clue what London weather's up to)

Anyway, To cut a long story short, I've given up (possibly temporarily) on the idea of publishing my short story which I wrote in my youth. I'm carrying on instead with documenting the minutae of my life at the moment which is apparently more therapeutic, and according to my Dad and Phil, better.

The highlight of the week is the arrival of the DISHWASHER which is absolutely amazing and my God, I'm amazed I've got to this age without having one. It's already changed my life and I've only had it 12 hours.

I've virtually completed the FILING of every document in the house. This has thrown up some interesting questions. I asked Blaglady for her views on filing. She says she puts everything in a drawer. This is my method as well, but due to my hoarding genes, this means as each cupboard fills up, I fill up another. Currently the volume of paperwork stands at a large wardrobe capacity. The reason it raises interesting questions is the categories I've given myself:

The 'Sentimental' Category takes up about 40%
Politics - 15%
Career - 20%
Work - 2%
Writing - 2%
Union - 2%

Anyway haven't got time to check if that adds up. My point is that my 'Sentimental' Category contains bits of all the other things anyway so why I'm bothering to separate it all God knows. What is sentiment anyway?

I might go for the Tate Britain method of chronological rather than the Tate Modern method of category. I know the TB way is more boring but I am a historian (or trying to be one) after all.

3 comments:

Jo said...

Dishwasher: with you 100%. As I may have said, when I moved in with my Significant Ex, my mother gave me a dishwasher. She said 'if you're going to live with a man, dear, you're going to need one of these'. She wasn't wrong.

Filing: I am an information manager by profession (at the moment) so allow me to share my approach to personal filing. I have a folder called 'Bills and shit' and into this goes anything that I might ever be required to retrieve - will, bills, pension statements, letters from tax offices, pay slips, contact lens prescriptions etc. It is ordered strictly by chronology and in no other way, and when it gets full I close it and start a new one. Everything else (postcards, boarding passes of sentimental value, gig tickets etc) goes into a shoe box, and when it gets full I close it and start a new one. The trick is to have a pile which then gets reviewed and filed, so you have a preservation strategy: the actual strategy is less important than its existence. In my opinion.

Phil said...

When a piece of paper enters the flat another should leave. That's my view. Same thing goes for boxes gagets and artwork.
The sentimental stuff I have some issue with. Its nice to hang on to things that remind you of significant events. But the threshold of significance is an issue with me. Will you ever look at a ticket to a flower show again. If you did what exactly would it make you feel?

Anonymous said...

Hello Phil, we haven't met yet, but perhaps you will come with Tattontastic to my birthday bash? I agree with ticket to flower show issue, being a natural hoarder myself. One piece of paper in two out would probably be better in the long run I reckon. That's slightly irrelevant to my comment actually, which is re the story and coincidence. How fantastic! I love all the coincidence. (Of course coincidence is a synchronous event tha may or may not have meaning beyond its own existence or something similar as explicated in the Celestine Prophecy apparently though I couldn't read it as it was so badly written.) Anyway, I kept one of my favourite stories for 16 years in the first draft before finally going back to it (God's Lift is Out of Order). It took me that long to get to the stage where I could complete it. Although I may be circle back to birth or death or a future that never happened if it takes me that long to write a short short story every time. So, Zero Hour: perhaps you could schedule it to go up on the big day. That is so neat and annoying as an idea. Perhaps it is because I am a Virgo. As a matter of fact, I'm currently dodging doing some tidying up. I MUST get on now and get the Hoover out.