Sunday, November 9, 2008

the filing cabinet


a few months ago, i went on a super-crazy-organization kick. in the midst of this kick, i purchased a filing cabinet from ikea that was on sale for like $25, with the intention of finally sorting through and organizing our mountain of "important documents" - the ones that you know you should keep because they look pretty official but you don't always really know what they say so they just end up stashed away in some random place and when the day comes that you might actually need one of them you can't find them... because they're so important that you stuck them in an old purse with a bunch of empty cd cases and an old discman. or something like that.

well, however many months later, i finally took the time to deal with the filing cabinet. the top drawer has all of our important papers - insurance stuff, benefits, 401(k), taxes - all of the boring papers. it wasn't fun but at least it's done. and i got to buy fun new office supplies, so i was happy.

and i used the bottom drawer to hold all of our memories. i've been a pack rat most of my life (i consider myself a recovering pack rat now), so over the years of my relationship with alan i've accumulated quite a collection of ticket stubs and love notes and photographs and cards. of course, the intention here was to create a scrapbook (or ten)... but that's for another weekend maybe. i did take all of my alan-and-olivia memorabilia and organize it into file folders, which makes me happy on so many levels. five and a half years' worth of memories had been living in haphazard order (i think that's an oxymoron) amongst two or three different shoe boxes in my craft room for quite some time (close to five and a half years, i would guess). now it's all so pretty and organized into pink file folders that are arranged in chronological order with labels and subfolders. and the very best part of all was sorting through everything - examining all the little pieces of our history and putting them in the correct order so they would all add up to tell the best story there ever was.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just want to let you know that your wonderful blog has an avid reader halfway around the world. (I'm in Southeast Asia.) Love it.

olivia said...

i'm honored that there are people who read my blog that don't know me personally... thanks to everyone who reads and everyone who comments, too! :)

Anonymous said...

makes me feel better knowing I'm not the only one with a filing system at home and organizes everything, even love notes, haha. I have 3 HUGE filing cabinets at work that keep me organized. haha LOVE it!