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, and the 'why don't you get a company in?' comments, 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 wind 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 something like a bank statement, or maybe a share certificate from 1974 the first thing is to check the date. It could be any date back as far as 1959 so there's no indication whether it's a current account or one that's been closed 10 years. You need to put it aside to see if there's a more recent one for the same company. You can't bin it in case it's a dormant account. the first time you touch it you don't know if its relevant or not.

Dad's filing system appears to have been keep everything and file it in the house. As long as he didn't throw it away, he would be able to find it should he ever need it. As a result of this mindset he kept;

• Every letter
• Every bank statement (monthly by post - he was too old to understand computers).
• Every receipt 
• Every bit of junk mail
• Every Newspaper
• Every Free newspaper
• Every insert which came with letters
• Every holiday brochure
• Every trade magazine
• Every 'WHICH' magazine - he had a monthly subscription since about 1994 which he never got around to cancelling.
• Every charity begging letter
• Every set of house insurance documents - renewal advice and renewal confirmation letters
• cardboard from shoeboxes
• Cardboard inserts which came with clothes and bedlinen
• Travel documents from every holiday he had ever been on
• Every TV licence he ever had
• Every MOT, tax and car repair documents for every car he'd ever owned
• Every document ever received for his life insurance
• Every birthday card anyone in the family ever had
• Every Christmas Card the family had ever received ever - in its envelope, with a list of cards sent and received that year

All of the post that was delivered was kept in its original envelope, he often wrote 'need to be actioned' or just ticked the outside.

He also kept empty envelopes - for example those which an appointment letter from the hospital was delivered in. 

He kept all the Lidl and Aldi magazines - we have found full boxes of these and previously asked him why he wanted to keep them. He'd told us that he may want to know what he'd paid for something.

His filing system also appeared to involve many, many, many of those boxes they have in Lidl and Aldi which the fruit and vegetables are displayed in - about 4" high by about 24 or 48" wide. When they started charging for carrier bags, he had decided to carry his shopping to the car in these boxes, which inevitably then got placed onto a pile, and filled with paperwork until the box either fell off the top or until another box appeared in another room and became the favoured box.

Also he kept cereal boxes, flattened (I don't know why either).

Wrapping paper - used, but saved in case he could re-use it.

Paper bags