Even more filing

Today we had an employee evaluation. i didn’t conduct the evaluation, but I did sit in. Overall, it was a positive event.

I got more little things taken care of such as the bank reconciliation. A friend stopped by with a delicious scone. Usually, I freeze these and eat them in halves or something. But today, I ate it.

We’ve been having our protein shake for breakfast, then having a larger lunch and a very light dinner. This has been great for Hun’s blood sugar, and I’ve been feeling pretty good too. We’ve not been having any sweets (we generally do not). But that scone just looked so delicious. And it was.

Oh my gosh, I had a really big pile today. Payroll records. This is the worst it has ever been. Truth be told, and to give myself some grace, it has been a challenging year for all sorts of reasons. That’s not an excuse, but I don’t want to be too hard on myself.

Tackling this pile did not take all day, but it did take all afternoon. Things got a whole lot messier before it was all said and done. I am pleased to say that everything got appropriately filed. Whew. Now I need to make sure that I do the filing as it comes or at least once a week. I really don’t want things to get behind more than once a week.

We are going to our new place this weekend. No cell service. No Internet. No television. So we are taking both trucks, loaded with stuff, the trailer will be loaded, and we will have some supplies to live with for the weekend. I don’t think we’ll do this every weekend, but once in a while. We are really looking forward to this.

When I got home this afternoon I did my cleaning task, and after dinner I started gathering some items to take including food, bedding, kitchen supplies, etc. We do have electricity (and heat), but we won’t be turning on the refrigerator as that will just be an electricity drain.

Of course we’ll have the Schnauzers.

More filing, cleaning and the birds

I got several things done at the office today including preparing for the next board meeting, paying some bills, clearing some paper work off the desk, and more filing.

Today I focused on making new folders for the last few accounts payable files. It took a good chunk of the afternoon even though I only had about a dozen to make.

About a year ago, I began switching over to Smead Viewables. After some organizing challenge workshops, I was impressed with how effective they appeared to work. So I set to re-organizing the files in my office. This didn’t include just files I had created by several decades worth of files. More about that some other time.

The process is somewhat time consuming, at least for me, and today I really began questioning if it was really a good plan. I mean, one could simply write on the manila folders, or use a template and print labels to the Inkjet printer and be done in a very short time.

First, you logon to Viewables.com and set your labels up. There are several options depending on the type of label you want to create. The most common ones that I use are the 3D labels and the top tab labels. Most of my files use both a hanging file folder and a manila folder. The hanging file folder remains in the filing cabinet from year to year. The manila folder is replaced at the beginning of each fiscal year. The 3D label is used for the hanging file folder while the top tab label is used for the manila folder.

Type the information you want to appear on your labels. When you are finished, print them. This generates a PDF document that you can download to your desktop. It’s better to do it this way than to print from the browser. Open the PDF and send to your color printer using the label paper supplied by Smead.

Peel the top tab labels away from the paper and place them on the appropriate manila folder.  Each label can be viewed from the front or back. It takes time to place the labels straight on the folder tab, without wrinkles.

For the 3D labels, peel the labels away from the paper and place them on the 3D tabs. This is an excellent video showing how to do this. This is quite time consuming for me. The labels can be removed and repositioned before being completely adhered to the tab. After putting the label on the tab, a clear plastic film is placed over the entire tab. This is another time consuming step, you have to take care to keep things lined up and wrinkle-free. However, the tabs do look pretty sharp.

After all this, the tabs are inserted into the hanging file folders at any position you choose.  I was really questioning my judgement in choosing this system by the time I got through all of this today. Until I got to the final step: actually filing the folders in the filing cabinet. Wow, I have to admit it is a thing of beauty.

When I got home this afternoon, Hun was loading more things into his rig in preparation for moving this weekend. So I took some time to do some cleaning. I swept the house and vacuumed the living room. I have been working through a daily cleaning schedule and I’m quite pleased with how much it has been helping me. More about that tomorrow.

Finally, the poor birds needed to be fed so I grabbed all the feeders and filled them up with black oil sunflower seeds. They really eat a lot of this stuff!

Filing, filing, filing

I have a lot of filing to do at the office.  Filing is not particularly fun. However, I do really enjoy having things organized.  I have gotten really behind. The best thing to do is to file things right away. However, that is not always practical. People are always needing something, or the phone is ringing, or someone is at the door. So I put things in a pile. Before I know it the pile is huge. Then I don’t even want to start. At least I put similar things in the same pile.

This particular pile is employee records, which should never get so behind. But they are the biggest pain, and the most difficult, so they take the longest. We got several new employees about the same time, so their files had to be created. Each record is maintained on a spreadsheet, so the spreadsheet has to be updated and printed. Holes have to be punched into every page. Each page has to be placed in the correct order (backwards chronological). And then it all has to be placed into the correct section of the folder. The folder is held in place with this rather interesting system.

I did get 100% caught up on this today! Tomorrow, I’ll begin tackling the payroll files.

One thing I have figured out that works for me is to focus on a single task. I have learned that multi-tasking really is not that effective or efficient.

Quite often I will also use the Pomodoro technique, work for 20 minutes and take a 5 minute break.

My money story

Today was a work day. But there is a lot of work at home. I’ve been doing lots of different things, trying to focus on becoming a homemaker. This is why the blog timeline is “finding my way home”.

Generally speaking I have not been a good homemaker, at least not from my perspective. I have not maintained my home, my finances, and even myself. Nearly two years ago, I realized that more than anything that is what I want to do now, at this point in my life. Is it too late?

My parents did not teach us anything about money. I think that is true for a lot of people, and I believe that is a big part of the reason that my attitude about money is what it is. I have two memories that stand out.

When I was probably 6 years old, we lived in our grandmother’s house in Groveland, Florida. I think my dad had left my mother. It was Christmas and the house was decorated, including a Christmas tree. When my mom was asking us what we wanted for Christmas, I asked her what she wanted. In a word, she said “Money”.  My 6 year old self took that literally, gathered all my coins together, wrapped them in notebook paper, and placed the package under the tree for my mom. My mom put lots of gifts under the tree for us. I kind of remember her opening her gift, but I don’t remember her response.

We weren’t rich, but we weren’t dirt poor. Probably lower middle class? I don’t know. We didn’t have a lot of money for sure, and so there was a lot of anxiety and tension around money. But we didn’t talk about money. Ever.

When I was 17, I had my first job. It was the summer after my first year of college. When I got my first bank statement, a friend sat me down and showed me how to balance my checkbook and reconcile my account. Wow, I thought it was so cool. I loved balancing and reconciling.

Over the years, money was usually tight. I was on my own at 16, put myself through college and grad school. I did have student loans, but also grants and small scholarships. I also worked. I did not understand the value of money, or really anything about finances.

Somewhere along the way, I did go into debt. But I dug my way out. Then I got married. We had different viewpoints about money. There is a long story there for another time. In short, we just did not see eye to eye about a lot of things, including finances. We paid off our debt, but we were not able to save anything.

Now I am in a different place emotionally and with a different person. We do see eye to eye. Together we are working to build a secure financial foundation. It’s actually exciting and fun. We are making mistakes, but learning so much.

We plan to retire soon. We have a little saved. We did get rid of our smaller debts, but have some big ones that we need to pay off. We both have retirement plans.

Staking our claim

Today we rose early, had a quick breakfast, finished loading the trailer, put the Schnauzers in Pearl and headed off to stake our claim.

We are in the process of moving to another home. This will take several months as lots of things must be accomplished including retiring from our current jobs and selling our current home. But we have found a place and are excited about moving on.

It was snowing as we left our home. That made me a little nervous. I had a previous experience pulling a trailer in the snow with the side by side on back. We ran off the road. I wasn’t driving (not that it would have made any difference). But Hun handled everything in expert fashion.

We are moving from a 3,500 square foot lodge-like house on nearly 20 acres near a small town (~2,000 souls) to a single wide mobile home (14×70 feet)on about 1/4 of an acre in basically a ghost town. It’s about 85 miles away from our current location.

We have taken photos before but today I took more, with the previous tenants things all moved out. It’s really not in too bad of a condition, considering that it is a 1980 model.

We are calling it the Schnauzer Castle. The dogs have never been permitted to run around in the yard, but this one is completely fenced in. They enjoyed themselves.

We unloaded the side by side and my kayak, as well as a truckload of boxes.

Then we had coffee and pizza for lunch.

After that we did a wee bit of grocery shopping and headed back home. We’ll probably make weekly trips like this until the roads are too bad.

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