Just When You Think You've Done All You Can....

On Sunday morning, LB and I headed out with the dog early, so we could get to the gym on time for my class. At the start of the walk, we came across this, sat on the wall outside someone's house.

I assumed it had been left for anyone to take, as it is a regular sight locally, to see things left outside the front of houses, that people no longer want.

As you can see from the photographs, it was in very good condition, almost like new.  Just a bit of dust and dirt here and there, nothing that wouldn't wipe off with a wet cloth.

As it was raining and we wouldn't be passing that way later, I took it with me and continued on the dog walk. I got a few strange looks carrying it around, but I don't let that worry me too much.

When I got it home, I cleaned it up a little and decided I'd use it to replace the beaten up metal suspension file, that I keep various odds and ends of paperwork in. I've wanted to replace it for a while, but didn't want to spend the £20 or more it costs for a new one.

Only a few weeks prior, in the lead up to Christmas, I had gone through the old file, sorted/labelled all the paperwork and thought I'd got it down to as little as possible. However, when it came to transferring everything over to the new file, there was quite a bit too much to put in it, without making it bulge somewhat. As I thought this was likely to prevent it lasting a reasonable amount of time, I decided to have another good sort through of my paperwork and try to remove any more unnecessary documentation.

Well, it's surprising how much more you can make yourself throw away when you need to.  I managed to recycle a whole pile of paper, shred quite a bit more and got it down to far less than I thought possible. Happily, everything now fits comfortably in the new concertina file, which is incidentally a lot lighter and easier to carry around the house, should I need to and it forced me do some unexpected decluttering to boot.  Result.

Talking of paper decluttering, Courtney Carver posted an interesting blog post yesterday on just this subject.  Here's the link.