One of my post-retirement self-assigned tasks is to go through all of our tools and combine like types and figure out how to store them so we know; 1) what we have, and 2) where they are. The wet, now dry – at least for the time being if it ever/never stops raining – basement, has expanded the basement sorting well beyond tools. So the tools themselves will have to wait their turn.
Yesterday I decided it was time to sort and file all of the paperwork received in conjunction with acquiring Medicare, in all of its parts. After pulling out all of the brochures provided to help, confuse, overwhelm, and explain the alphabet soup of Medicare choices, it was not a large amount of paper.
And while I was looking at our filing system to decide which file box they should join (medical or finance) I started looking at some of the other paperwork we had. Sorting through this was almost a fun activity, in a liberating way. Old work reviews, medical plans that we’re no longer part of, explanation of benefits from a decade or more ago are all headed for shredding or recycling. I did stop at the EOBs for 2018, the year of Carl’s half million dollar medical expenses. I just wasn’t quite ready to send it on its way.
There are guidelines for how long to save certain records, and I probably exceed the suggestions for some things. On one hand I still have the gas/travel records for my 1980 Honda Civic that lasted 20 years and 280,000 miles. It contains records of my trips crossing the country back and forth, first by myself, then with boyfriend/husband in tow, and finally with kids. But on the other shoulder is the voice reminding me of going through my father-in-law’s files after he passed, and not wishing that on our kids.
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