Yesterday I helped an old woman sort papers. She paid me. I didn't realize what I was getting into. Sorting papers sounds pretty easy. Her house has always looked basically neat. Turns out she has papers hidden inside many areas, all unorganized.

I think she's on every mailing list that exists, and she prints stuff off the internet (quite often) rather than bookmarking anything.

Her guidelines about how to sort everything evolved during the process. I only got to about 30% of it. Did as much as I could before today, as now she has company staying at her house.

What most people wouldn't think twice about tossing out she wants to hold onto. You don't want to disrespect the person, especially an elderly person, and attempt reasoning with them, essentially suggesting a lifestyle change...and I was fighting going down that road. The worse part is that she's charitable and has upteen thousand organizations trying to get money out of her (mostly political causes) and you can just tell the organizations are self-serving businesses foremost. There are SO many of them out there.

So having to HOLD onto that stuff...let alone create folders for the organizations, was difficult. But not my call. She could have a massive bonfire with all the paper, not ignoring the fact that paper burns fast.

Would love to see the job finished (might actually do it for free since it slightly haunts me that the other 70% is soldiering on either unorganized or unshredded), but I think she'll be okay with it all again after company leaves