Organization -- or How I've already lost the battle

In the years before we had computers and scanners and highspeed internet connections, I thought I was at war with paper. No matter how much of the stuff I threw away, more managed to find its way into the house. The post office delivered bills and junk mail. My husband came home from work with magazines and newspapers. Even my kids got in on the action with bulletins and crafts from church. I'd throw away what I could and helplessly pile the rest somewhere out of the way of our daily lives to be dealt with later. Occasionally, I’d get fed up with the pile of paper masquerading as a centerpiece on my kitchen table and break it down into smaller, more manageable piles that would fool me into thinking I’d actually accomplished something. The cycle of rebuilding and demolishing that pile seemed never-ending—and continues to this day.

The promise of a paperless society thrilled me to no end. I signed up for and paid my bills online. I transferred subscriptions to electronic format. I formed a partnership with my scanner and saved important documents to hard drives. I backed up, saved, tagged, bookmarked, and indexed until I thought I had it all figured out.

I whittled down the list of things on paper to the bare minimum, and still the post office failed to remove me from their list of appointed rounds. There was always something new in the box, but now my war had spread to two fronts. What used to show up in my mailbox now showed up in my email. My bank would send me a notice that I had a new bill. The billing company would send me one to tell me that the new statement was ready. What used to be one bill in the mail was now two separate emails—more if either felt the need to confirm the payment after it was sent. My paperless society was drowning me in email, instead of paper. How was this an improvement?

While the information overload has never gotten in the way of anything I wanted to do, this is my only real failure on the organizational front. Whether it's paper or electronic, keeping track of all the information around me defeats me, daily. I've added calendars, alarms, and both physical and electronic notes just to keep up. I'm too stubborn to surrender, so I keep fighting, even though I think it's a losing proposition.