Peace of Mind Organizing

Weed out your files!

23 May 2022

I’ve just been through the journey of moving my dear 91-year-old father into assisted living. It went well and he’s happy. I am so grateful. (Prepare yourself for multiple blog posts based on this journey!)

As part of the process, I went through everything in his condo that he didn’t take with him into assisted living. I also went through everything that we brought over from my aunt’s home when she moved into a care facility in February. I thought I’d be able to go through her stuff at my leisure, but instead I had to go through it in a compressed amount of time as I tried to empty the condo in just a few days.

My big takeaway? Weed out your files! I had years’ worth of bank statements and paid bills and EOBs to go through and ultimately. There were many boxes of shredding. Luckily one of our wonderful real estate agents, Megan Watts of Team Watts helped me by schlepping the bulk of it to Staples. But going through, and properly destroying, all those papers definitely added to the burden of an already overwhelming task.

My own file cabinet could use some weeding and I vow that by the end of the month I will do it. And I’m going to keep it lean because (a) I don’t need those papers and (b) no one wants to deal with them when I’m no longer able.

Do yourself (and your loved ones a favor). Weed out your files!

Tagged with: declutter, estate organizing, paper management, paper piles

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