2016 was a hard year for us, and by the time we discovered we had a huge backlog in the “to file” box, it seemed unsurmountable, and we tried really hard to ignore it. Until now.

This is part of our 100 Things in 2017 challenge. Here’s the full list.

It’s kind of fitting that our first Thing in 2017 is to make a clean start. Normally we try to avoid “new-year’s resolutions” or “clean slate” type of thinking, but in this case it felt really good to dig out from under this mountain of paper. (Mug for scale.)

We actually have a system for these things, which was fully capable of handling all this paper. Files at hand, long-term files in boxes, memory crates for each person (with folders by year). We just hadn’t been using it.

So we broke out the label maker, made some new folders for 2017, and spent most of a day figuring out where everything needed to go, and then putting it there. Super satisfying. We’re going to try and avoid getting into this situation again, so we’ve set up an automated reminder to do the filing every week. Cross your fingers!