Clearing out your home office?
It’s a tray of polished buttery antique pine, like something a 1920s Ontario housewife would put a plump pillow of dough in to rise, but what it contains today is a yeasty foot-high pile of papers, a dry highlighter, two dimes used for turning screws and a dusty paperclip. The papers have been accumulating since June. Time to get to the bottom of the inbox.
Let’s make two piles.
Three piles.
Okay, a fourth pile, but that’s just going to go into the recycling bin. That RRSP statement mailed in May can’t go in the recycling bin, though. Then whoever digs through fourteen tonnes of recycling materials will find I bought $1,632.08 in cannabis stocks. Those are too good to pass up. They’ll find my name and portfolio number and hack into my bank account and rob it. Rip it up. The Bitcoin thief is not going to get his hands on my assets.
Receipt tickets for The Lost City of Z. Interesting film, Robert Pattinson disguised as unattractive. Came out in 2017. Fourth pile. The Bay is offering me a 20 percent gift card for all purchases before July 8. Same. Six receipts for things I cannot remember buying.
Final notice invoice from lawn sprinkler people that system will be cut off. Drought in the back garden may not be as bad as I thought.
Brochures to writers’ conferences, workshops, editing sessions and forums. All of interest. All past their registration and, in fact, have already taken place already. Pile four.
Pile for filing gets put in pile two. Two dozen letters from government, bank, utility companies, aunts, aunts on behalf of uncles, aunts on behalf of charities, charities themselves. How do I tell the David Suzuki Foundation that I have shifted my patronage to African elephants? Will Decide Later, which is pile three.
Cheque from dental insurance for $182.86. Possibly staledated. Pile one.
Nearly at the bottom of the box, but now have four piles of paper on the desktop. Going to the movies. Perhaps no need to keep the tickets.