When I tell people that they Just Have No Idea How Supreme My Paper Mess Is, the most frequent response is, “Well, how bad can it be?” What they really mean is: I Wish You’d Post Some Pictures Already. And so I’ll oblige.
Above: before starting.
Depressingly, it actually looked worse a couple days later after I'd already spent an hour going through things (right). This is because the kittens kept diving-bombing the piles I'd made.
It took more two hours to go through all the stuff on the floor, but afterwards it did look better; see below:
It took another hour to go through the stuff on the desk:
It took yet another hour to go through the stuff that had been piled on the hatboxes I use as a side table:
At this point, what had been on the floor, on the desk, and on the hatboxes had been reduced to one 7" high pile:
Then I started the filing, completely starting from scratch using the categories discussed in yesterday's post. After another hour, the pile was 4½” high; another hour later it was 3½” ; yet an hour more it was 2¼”; then 1¼”. I then spent a good two hours making new labels for the hanging files with the Smead labeling system I favor. Time-consuming, yes, (although much of that time was getting our old jack-of-all-trades-master-at-none scanner/printer/copier to cooperate), but I’ve found that the functionality of my filing system relies on the visibility of the file labels.
I ended up using only 20 hanging folders, and had plenty of room left in my file cart. After another half-hour of filing. 11½ hours after I'd started (spread out over a number of days), I was done with the first leg of my Supreme Paper Mess.
