Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Sorting thru years of papers

I find sorting thru papers and deciding what to keep and what to shred  more difficult than dealing with "things."


I know I have to keep all of our tax records for  seven years. These will be kept by our daughter in her attic, or somewhere that she can get to them if needed. 
 I remember when we moved to California I carried one year of tax records with us, but the mortgage bank wanted to see three, and I had to dig thru many boxes in the storage area of the moving company to find them. If our records are in a pod somewhere  it could be a problem.

But what about all the other records? 


I worry that I will discard something that we will needed. 


 I need to tell myself is that no one is put in jail for discarding a piece of paper.


Fined by the IRS maybe, but not given the death penalty!






I think what I dread most is Craig asking me for something that I have tossed! 


He holds me responsible for keeping track of papers.  If I can't find something he really gets upset.  But I will survive his rants. 


Actually I'm almost done with the boxes in the dining room.  I was pleased to see how much I had actually sorted thru last spring.  


Finally,  I have decided to put a couple of boxes of personal records aside for another time! I have decided I want to scan some of them and put them on  CDs or flash memory which our daughter can also keep for us.  These are records I want to keep, but don't need to have in the RV. These could go to storage.  
I've done enough for now!
So here is my Gold Star for today!






































13 comments:

  1. You have certainly earned that Gold Star.

    It's nearly time for me to get rid of more stuff that's stored. Our Inland Revenue expects us to have records back 10 years. Maybe I'll wait until 2015 then I can dump everything as we've done nothing much since then.

    So much easier than going through old meaningless stuff.

    Is it time for a creative break?

    Blessings.

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  2. IRS says you only have to keep them three so that is what i am doing...

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  3. That is on my task list for getting ready to hit the road. I am not looking forward to sorting through all of the papers, some that I have had for 30 years! I guess it is better for me to do it now than for someone else to have to do it later!

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  4. Good work Merikay!! You are so consistently moving forward to your dream! Bravo!

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  5. Love, love, love your blog. :)

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  6. This is one thing that we are perplexed what to do. Two filing cabinets full of tax returns, legal docs, etc. The thought of scanning all that in drives me insane. There should be a company that does that for you. Would be worth the $$.

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  7. I'm finding the paperwork sorting to be the worst part..maybe that's why I've put it off!

    You're doing well...you earned your gold star...

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  8. way to get through it all!!!...good for you!!

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  9. I'm afraid to tell you that I just torched all that tax stuff before I went full time. I kept the tax forms I sent in, but that's about it. I'm thinking I need to purge some of the stuff I took with me. All of my tax stuff from this year can be put in one regular envelope. Not much income or outgo stuff in my life, I guess.

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  10. Came across your blog today. It brought back memories of when we started preparing for our fulltime adventure and it came quicker than we were anticipating, but no regrets.

    Marilyn
    http://blessourvoyage.blogspot.com

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  11. Good job! You definitely get a gold star. You should also buy yourself a big paper shredder too and have some fun!!

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  12. Ha ha ha - had to laugh at the photo of the woman in jail. Yes, sorting all the paperwork is a HUGE and difficult job. What I have found in our almost 2 years of full-timing is that I need those 7 years of IRS records and I should have obtained all of our medical records before we headed out. I've kept too much genealogy paperwork probably, but it has come in handy since I'm putting everything on Ancestry.com now. Photos were the most difficult. The original albums are at our son's house. I brought along one big box so I could scan them, then give them to family. What a joke! I've maybe scanned 50 photos. It's so time-consuming. Keeping plugging away - you'll get there one day.

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  13. I hate sorting/shredding paper too. I think it's because I can spend HOURS, and there is so little space freed up in all that time. Very compact clutter, isn't it?

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