One of my high hopes for last year was to sort through lots of things. I haven't done as much as I'd hoped but some things are falling into place a little.
In most respects I am a very organised person - eg I file things away efficiently, meet deadlines, index my photos, keep a diary and can generally remember where things can be found lurking round the house. However, I'm also very untidy and have a tendency to hang onto all manner of things, on the basis they may be useful or interesting one day.
I made some progress in 2012 in things like going through boxes of old letters dating back to my childhood. I don't really know why I'd hung on to so many, but having kept them for in some cases 30 or 40 years it would seem wrong to chuck them out without thought. Some have ended up straight in the recycling (eg where I can't remember the person they were from) but there are others that I can't bring myself to throw away at the moment. At least the volume is being whittled down.
Another area where I made progress was in sorting a lot of old school memorabilia I'd hung onto - mostly old exercise books. At least I was able to get these out of the house without having to destroy them - the school archivist was pleased to receive them. I guess there will be interest in seeing how much some subjects have changed in the 40 years since I started high school - and not many people hoard such things like I do! (My Mum also had a comprehensive folder of letters to parents that I've added to the pile - appeals for funding, uniform rules, even a letter about head lice!) If you find yourself with similar things I'd really recommend seeing if your school would be interested as it's so much more worthwhile than recycling them!
Clearing out junk has been harder as there are lots of decisions to take even when we're agreed on getting rid of something, to determine what just has to be thrown away and what can go to the recycling centre, the textile recycling bag collected with the bins, a charity shop, freecycle or similar, ebay or a car boot. We ended the year by knuckling under and finalising decisions on masses of stuff - I suspect we won' t be alone in arriving with a car load at the charity shop in a few days' time!
But my biggest organisational success of the year has been to start using Evernote, an excellent note-keeping system that you can keep synchronised between your computers and can also access via a web interface from someone else's computer. I'd long been a fan of Microsoft's OneNote, using it both as a kind of scrapbook and for organising complicated work projects. I've scarcely opened OneNote since reading about Evernote in an excellent feature by the Guardian's Oliver Burkeman in summer.
Evernote has completely transformed how I keep track of all kinds of things. I've got lots of lists in it and also use it for some work. I'll write another time about some of the ways I use it and how I work around some of its shortcomings such as its lack of a calendar.
The Technomage and I are sharing the account and gradually building up notes and lists covering everything from when our teeth are due for a check-up to purchase dates of important items. I feel it's really taken over from my old Palm handheld, which I'd got out of the habit of using very much. And it's brilliant being able to access the information from any web-connected device. When I finally buy a smartphone I'll be able to use it on that too - it works fine on my Android tablet.
If only I'd started using Evernote earlier - I'd wouldn't have got stung with a £60 'quarantine' fee when I let a .eu domain lapse as a credit card had expired and I missed the email about it...- the first time this has happened in a dozen years of owning various domains. (By coincidence, the same thing happened to the Technomage the same month but his was a .org and the quarantine fee was only £2.99) Needless to say such renewals have now joined countless other things in the Evernote system.
Starting to get all this sort of information organised is making me more confident that there's hope for clearing the ebay/charity shop/car boot backlog in the new year....
Tuesday 1 January 2013
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