44) OHIO. Why normal doesn't work here.

 

The thing with having a social media account or a blog or whatever, it attracts comments. Most of which doubtless are made with only good intentions but it makes you think sometimes... sunshine you have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA. 

Apart from the 'why don't you just bin the lot' brigade, another example is 'use the OHIO method'. No I'm not off on holidays, the last holiday didn't go too well if you recall.

Anyway OHIO is Only Handle It Once. It was suggested I do this with each piece of paper from the house  This of course makes sense in a normal world. However, in my world...

1. Get the bit of paper from on top of a dusty heap of many many other bits of paper.

2. Sneeze

3 Readjust pile so the rest of it doesn't avalanche on you.

4. Get a wodge of papers

5. Find somewhere to put the wodge so you can sort them.

6. Remove obvious rubbish like newspapers, old Lidl magazines, junk mail, receipts, envelopes and flattened cereal boxes.

7. Put remaining papers in a fresh pile and add more to the pile to take away to sort at my own house in my own time and away from the dust.

8. Carry new sorted pile to my car and drive it 7 miles to my house. Take it around the back for the wond and sun to remove more dust.  Wait an hour.

9. Sift pile again, removing bank statements from envelopes and removing junk flyers and anything over 5 years old.

10. Take filtered statements into house and sort into 25 piles of different companies and put in poly pockets.

11. Put all back in plastic box A to Z to deal with tomorrow.

12. After you have done steps 1 to 10 many many more times, you will have a vague picture of what you're dealing with and only then can you summarise whether you have something worth chasing. If you do, then chase it.

The first time you pick up keys say a bank statement dated 2011, you have no idea if it's a current account or one that has been closed 10 years. You must wait.to see if you have a more recent one. You can't deal with it the first time you touch it as you don't know if its relevant or not.