Paper | Organizing Goddess - Part 2

Keeping Track of Mobile Deposits

One of the great conveniences of the 21st Century is not having to go to the bank to deposit a check. If you have a smart phone, you can deposit your checks using your bank’s app. But what do you do with a check after you’ve deposited it? And if you decide to hold on to your deposited checks, how do you keep track of which checks you’ve already deposited and which still need to be deposited? I took a…

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A Cautionary Tale about Ephemera

I’ve written about ephemera before (see my blog post entitled Ephemera).  If you need a reminder of what ephemera is, Dictionary.com defines it as “items designed to be useful or important for only a short time, especially pamphlets, notices, tickets, etc.”  In this case, I’m writing about a theater program.  Specifically, a program I did not save for a show I did not see.  And yet it has been sitting on the end table in my living room for weeks,…

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Organizing Medical Records

Medical records come into our lives in a variety of ways. Sometimes we walk out of the doctor’s office with papers in hand. Sometimes they get sent to us via snail mail or e-mail. Frequently, they appear in electronic portals such as MyChart. That can make it hard to figure out what to keep and how to keep it. Let’s start by delineating the different types of medical info that will come your way: Bills and receipts Insurance forms Explanation…

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An Organizing Fail

File Cabinets / Paper / 

My daughter recently said, “Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to get organized”, and I had to agree with her. Here’s what happened. My 23-year old was in the first wave of workers eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine. When she came home after her first dose in January, I asked her for her vaccination card and told her that I would put it in a safe place. A month later, on the day of her second dose, she came to me…

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The Perils of Outdated Papers

When clients contact me for help with managing papers, I always ask them, “Do you have a file cabinet?” The answer almost always is, “Yes, but it’s full.” Usually their file cabinet is full with outdated papers that haven’t been reviewed in a long time. One of the first things I’ll do when I work with these clients is go through the old files and get rid of anything that is no longer relevant. Going through old papers is time-consuming, but it’s…

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