Memory Lane
đź“Ť Written from: Wheeling, IL USA
It’s 8pm on a Friday night and we’re standing in our office having a scanning party. And this party will continue throughout the weekend. We’re going through every single folder in our four drawer filing cabinet and will leave no piece of paper unturned. Our main goal on tackling this project is to scan any important medical or legal documents and place the original copies into our safety deposit box at the bank. We still cannot understand why we held on to every receipt from auto shop, Boomer’s vet bills, all our doctor’s visits notes as these folder were out of hand. We are taking note never to do this again as we do not want to kill anymore trees and it takes up SO much space.
After we managed to sort through all the serious files, then the next wave of files consisted of memory items. We already shared with you that we are keeping some memory items, but we cannot keep 28 years of images (yes, we still have some images before the digital era), school yearbooks, and multiple memory / baby boxes. One of the difficult things for Laura is to toss is old cards and photos so we are solving this by reading through them and only scanning the most meaningful ones to her. You’re probably thinking who keeps every card, but this girl does! We’re talking birthday cards, adoption day cards, anniversary cards, work anniversary cards, wedding cards and even notes she found from her parents when they wished her well on a spelling test from elementary school. Laura does feel good about going through all her memory boxes as her mother saved every detail about her adoption from China. These precious memories are special and we will save the pieces she values most in our storage unit. We’re not going to hide it, but reading through all the cards and documents for Laura’s adoption brought some tears of joy to our eyes. Sometimes we forget how special those around us make us feel and it’s a great reminder to cherish it.
Laura does not consider herself a hoarder, but a strong memory keeper and she working on finding what will allow her to digitally save those memories without taking up space. We still need to review all the photo albums and yearbooks on the shelves, but we are prioritizing the filing cabinet first. We will keep you posted on this project later since this will take more time.
The filing cabinet purge is truly the most boring, but important part of the process since we want all our ducks in order when it comes to referencing paperwork in the future. We can’t believe how much we have accumulated in five years of starting our lives together and running a business. We are beyond thrilled to have recycled and shredded multiple pounds of paper.
