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Ruth Everhart

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For the Filing Cabinet (or not)

March 27, 2012 By Ruth Everhart Leave a Comment

Yesterday, March 26, was my daughter’s 25th birthday. Happy Birthday to her! I could not be prouder!

Yesterday was also my mother’s 83rd birthday. My first daughter was born on my mother’s 58th birthday. I could joke that I planned it to make it easier to remember birthdays. But March 26 just seems to be a magic birthdate in my family.

Perhaps these birthdates combined to make me feel a bit nostalgic. Perhaps I was simply avoiding a writing task. But yesterday I plunged in and completed a task I’ve been dabbling at for some time — I purged my way through 2 entire file cabinet drawers. The paper was mainly sermons and church-related paper. Since I have the last 6 years or so worth of sermons on my computer, I got rid of anything I have on the cloud, or that I have a similar version of on the cloud. I also had a lot of reference paper filed, that I no longer refer to. The Internet has really changed my method of sermon preparation. I filled 2 milk crates with paper to be recycled.

When my husband came home we hauled the empty 4-drawer file cabinet out to the porch and I listed it on Craigslist. This has been a goal for some time.

Now I have a stack of remnant paper to deal with — some of it is papers I wrote in seminary, enough to fill a large-sized shoe box. I think I will label it “History docs.” Some sermons have historic or sentimental value (my first or last at a particular church) but I will never reuse them. So I guess they will go in that box.

I have some sermons/papers that predate digital, but have potential value for re-use. Maybe I will scan them. That would be the next step. That will leave a small stack of problem paper I’m sure. I’ll cogitate on it.

Being thrifty/green by nature, I salvaged all the file folders and will cut them up to use as scratch paper. I like that heavy weight. The cutting is a task I can do in front of the TV.

That file cabinet represented more than 20 years of professional paper!

Over the last few weeks I have sold off 2 boxes of books, so I now have room for ongoing manuscripts on my bookshelves, which is a real help. I am turning from mainly preacher into mainly writer, and my study is evolving as well.

Uncluttering as a Spiritual Practice how to let your file systems evolve as your life changes

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