What goes up must come down.
Remember all those Department 56 houses that went upstairs back before Christmas? Well, today they had to come back downstairs. Big job. Plus I had to make room for them in the window seat storage area. Bigger job.
The window seat was full of boxes of old professional records, mostly financial, and boxes of family photos in frames that have been replaced with more recent photos around the house. Plan 1 was to de- frame all the photos so they can be put into albums and the frames are going to the thrift shop. The grandchildren will love seeing pics of their parents as kids or of themselves as babies. The way they are now no one sees them! Plan 2 was to empty out those boxes of records. But how long do you have to keep financial papers?
According to a couple different web sites, you can dispose of bank statements after only one year. Keep tax records and returns for seven years. (Some say four!) Save home purchase records until you sell the home so you can prove your cost basis. Complicated transactions like a rental exchange should be kept, perhaps forever. Either you or your broker should keep stock purchase records until the stock is sold so you can prove your cost basis. Ordinary receipts can be thrown away after one year, if they are used in preparing your taxes keep them three or four years. There are other, rarer documents mentioned in a Google search.
I'm embarrassed to admit our boxes dated back a minimum of ten years! Some were twenty years old. We were brutal and fearless. Everything was toted outside to be burned in our little fire pit. What a walk down Memory Lane. It was hard to not pause and remember what that check paid for or that letter complained about. It took more than an hour to burn through half the stack. More to torch tomorrow!
This is the kind of job that does make my shoulder hurt. It's not that any part is so strenuous, just the whole package. I took two ibuprofen which are very effective but keep me awake. If I weren't tired I could carry the second half of the houses down. I can only carry four at a trip though so the second half of the houses will have to wait till tomorrow. The window seat is still in a bit if disarray but things are looking up. I'm going to have to figure a better way to use them next Christmas. I love the store displays where a whole village surrounds the Christmas tree. Maybe even a train winds through the town. I could do that if we got rid of the television.
I kind of doubt that is going to happen.
Archive timeline: 2014: May and June - preparing for surgery, July - surgery and post op problems,
August - recovery and physical therapy, September - thinking medically, October - getting back to
normal. November. -still in recovery, December-6 months and holding.
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