Last week, I was looking forward not-so-eagerly to a lot of work in the New Year. My regular part-time job, a book editing project, and another online editing course. Plus, a German conversation course, which I am taking out of pure masochistic pride. And, all the usual family CEO duties. You know, laundry, cooking, cleaning, nagging the Teenager and stuff.

So, what did I do? Rip and shred!

First the ripping: I had a big basket of old blue jeans sitting in my office/craft room demanding to be used. Priorities, you know. Those jeans really NEEDED to be a quilt. So, I set to ripping and rotary-cutting them, and made a good start on a denim log cabin quilt using a tutorial I found here.

Very happy with how it’s turning out so far! I happened across some other interesting denim projects on this Inventive Denim blog. Should keep me busy over this long, cold winter. A girl can only spend so many hours staring at a computer, you know. Must. Have. Creative. Outlet.

On to shredding. I’m not an organizational disaster, by any means, but I have always had a really hard time with paper. It’s just easier for me to think in terms of digital files and folders than in physical ones. I don’t know why.

Also, paper makes me sneeze 🙂

My first project was getting all my course work copied and organized into Evernote so that I can refer to it after the course is over. Then I set about getting that dang book organized. I feel much more on top of the project now and am ready to move forward with it.

But, our personal files were still a mess. I had done some scanning before we left the States, but it was an incomplete job and not organized well. Over the weekend, I went all-out, scanning and shredding like a maniac, and moved just about everything into Evernote.

I ended up with two bags like this

I shredded anything for which I don’t need an original document (which was about 95 percent of our files). I’m really happy having everything in one place, backed up, and shared in the cloud with my husband. Our current, physical files now occupy about two inches of file drawer space. I can easily fit it all in one small accordion folder when we move. And, I finally know where everything is, at least digitally speaking.

That said, I didn’t scan everything, because I didn’t think some archive-type stuff was worth the trouble. For example, a big packet of documents regarding the house we sold before moving to Vienna. My shredding hand got tired, so I just stashed those away for the moment, and will probably shred them when I leave post, along with some other back tax stuff. But all that is in a separate drawer now, and not interfering with the essential stuff.

There were a few other things that I scanned, and kept the originals. For example, all my kids school records. Well, you know, they might enjoy having them some day. Or, they might wonder why I held on to all that old-fashioned paper crap. Whatever.

So, OK, this was procrastination. I admit it. But, some people just work better in a clean office. We do what we have to do in order to clear our physical and mental spaces and then we get to work.

Onward!