Obsessive Innieism

I’ve been cleaning this morning. I’m talking deep spring cleaning in serious super purge mode.

And the sad fact is I haven’t left this spot.

As I’ve mentioned, I'm an innie. I like my schtuff secured neatly away behind a door, curtain, or screen. If that’s the case for my large items, it is doubly the case for my paperwork and other such small items. I am a serious fan of the file system. In my mind, I have addressed the mess if it is neatly organized in a folder. And then in a file.

And I like my files color coded. I have a huge pile of old folders in various colors on stand- by, waiting to be called up into active duty.

Brown files are used for the house… green for all things financial…gray for all things auto… red is insurance. (Come to think of it, since we currently use Blue Cross, those files ought to be reassigned to blue…) The girls are filed in purple unless it relates to college. Then, it would be orange. Can anyone relate?

I have a massive four drawer filing cabinet on The List, but I have no decent place to keep it in the house proper. Instead, I have mini files in various places around this house. My favorite file spot is behind a door in the den closet. Not only do I have a two drawer filing cabinet full of files in there, but I also keep a standing file on top of it for those items that I want at my fingertips.

I know that if I have to take the extra millisecond to actually open a filing cabinet drawer, I will probably just leave said item in the horizontal waiting room. And that would be a mess magnet.

 A VERTICAL waiting room, on the other hand, is perfectly acceptable to me. That would be the reason that I created this…

It’s my little magnetic “to be filed” nook. Seriously, I’m pretty sure this inniesim is a psychological disorder. Perhaps The Practical One will do her masters thesis on it.

And that leads me to my Wednesday morning purge session.

This morning, as I was trying to locate a recent email, I discovered that my obsessive innieism has now entered the computer age. In my inbox alone, I had PAGES of emails. To deal with my emails, I have set up a variety of e- folders for the messages that I feel the need to save hoard. I have a Sunday school e-folder, a DAR e-folder, a school e-folder… Most oddball of all is the e-folder I set up for emails that I just can’t seem to delete. This would include emails that are funny, informative, or sentimental. Appropriately, I have named that folder The Attic.

So this morning, I sat with my coffee for a few HOURS and tried to do a little purge of my e- hoarding. I purged email folders. Then, I headed over to Favorites Paradise, where I have also utilized the e- folder system. That would be the reason that I had to scroll past 29 folders before I could reach the link to the aforementioned email to begin with.

See?

I have e-folders for Bible study, for blogs, for message boards, for recipes, for decorating, for crafts… I have one folder simply named “orange”. Good grief. Within each folder is a neatly stashed bundle of links.

 In Bible study alone, I counted 55.

Now, for a compulsive meanderer  like me, any purge presents the dangerous risk of wandering. If I’m not careful, clicking a saved link will lead me on a cyber adventure road through google land. Therefore, I had to preset my purge to a specific block of time. Tomorrow morning, I’ll set aside just 15 minutes to do some more. At this rate, I might complete the job by the new year.

If I knew how to delete in bulk, I would do it. In fact, if anyone knows how, please share the e- instructions. HOWEVER, if there is a way to color code e- folders,

please… please…just don’t tell me.