Friday was the Day of Cleaning Up at the Marie Celeste. We have these periodically throughout the year, but they are occurring more frequently in the lead up to our move to a new location. Very sensible practice indeed (and shocking, given that Marie Celeste and sensible aren’t terms you would ordinarily put in the same sentence, unless there is a big “not” between them). Casual clothes are de rigueur and we spend the day filling recycling bins and chucking stuff out – it’s actually rather more fun than it sounds.
Unfortunately the downside of all of this cleaning is the tendency to make unfavourable comparisons between the high level of neatness and organisation at the workstation to the not-quite-so-high-level at the Hardly Hovel – and then resolve to Do Something About It.
With this in mind, I decided that on Saturday I would consolidate the various caches of paper secreted throughout the Hardly house. I needed somewhere to put the papers once consolidated, so of course this required shopping.
After I returned home from a short shopping expedition to Westfield Bondi Junction I realised exactly why it is that I should not be allowed to roam shopping centres unaccompanied.
I intended to only purchase a plastic lidded box to hang suspension files in. Sure, this goes against all of my better records management judgement, but I know suspension will work for me and I refuse to have a lateral filing system at home (an ex-boss had one years ago – right down to the alphabetic codafile labels down the side!).
This is what I arrived home with:
- Plastic file box
- 3 packets of suspension files
- 1 Berenstain Bears DVD boxed set
- 1 spongebob squarepants tv game
- 1 duvet cover
- 8 pairs of pants – well, some of them were on sale
I need to be stopped!