Today's accountability project from therapy was shame-cleaning. Therapist asked how the paper sorting thing from our last session was going along. Instead of paper sorting, I'd pill bottle sorted and labeled.

You could argue that for the first however long post-therapy this afternoon I worked on pill boxes instead of papers, but I think I've fairly comprehensively put enough time into papers by this point in the evening that I can say I worked on papers. Even though the pill boxes needed doing too.

I have red folders labeled 2022, 2023, and 2024, as well as Scrap and a blank red label. I have a blue folder labeled Chemo 2023.

The dated folders are getting miscellaneous medical stuff, mostly prescription. The scrap folder is going to grow once I start sorting the other folders. Even if I'm keeping all of the "you got this medication on this date and your insurance saved you this much" slips, I certainly don't have to keep all of the medication information sheets. My general rule for those is I keep one copy of the medication information sheet per year that I am taking it in, or perhaps an additional one if it's updated at some point during the year. At some point this will get condensed, but right now I'm just trying to make sense of the chaos.

Today I prepared boba for bubble tea, and it is being delicious. I am having it with chai spiced milk tea.

In chemo news, the cold cap is working insofar as I am getting a fuzz of new hair in the sparse space on top of my head that I can only really perceive when I hold the whole small chunk up and see how it stops being there after about two centimeters.

When I get to the bottom of this bin, I may start doing an internal sort of the red folders. It's also possible that bedtime may hit first.

I've been low-key wanting a proper set of file drawers for a while. So I started paying attention to the local ads (Craigslist, Nextdoor).

In January there was a sturdy little old two-drawer one with screwed-up rails and some things inside it. I replaced the rails and started removing the stuff, only to discover that there were vaccination records, among other things that someone might want back.

I was researching the owner (it seemed like the thing may have been on a second owner, for reasons) when the household and I got nastily sick (fun ER trip after my lungs were sufficiently congested that their noise kept me awake).

After getting better, I started triaging my own papers, and developed a way to get things incrementally organized without:
a) having to do all of the initial sorting at once
b) screwing up my past work when adding new things
c) having to commit to doing all the fiddly bits when adding subsequent barely-sorted clumps of paper.

I am tentatively calling it Red Folder, Blue Folder. The gimmick is that for each one folder that a non-ADHD person would have in their filing cabinet, we have (at least) two.

Red Folder serves two roles. For things like taxes, where there's a current set of papers and everything else is not current, the red folder is for the taxes that aren't done yet. For things that just need sorting and putting away, the red folder is for unsorted things in that category.

Blue Folder is things that are no longer active and are sorted. They're for keeping as long as they need to be kept.

I picked these colors because they were what came with the file drawer. They could be any two colors.

Also, I ran out of folders. So I put folders on the list. We headed to a friendly office supply store. (They still have toilet paper, paper towels, and some cleaning supplies, incidentally.)

Belovedest allowed as how they should work out how to store their own papers. They asked me if file drawers were a thing that got posted for cheap-or-free.

I'd just seen a promising-looking listing on Craigslist, and pulled it up. Still posted.

We got the files (letter size), searched Target for the right kind of hair tie for housemate (they're running low, but we didn't see the right kind), and paused to glare at the opportunistic person scalping Lysol wipes outside the door.

We swung by the location of the ad, which gave an address and the file drawers were on the porch. I did some volume math. The 4-drawer legal size one would fit in the car if the passenger seat was shoved forward. Problem: we had two large bags of groceries, plus miscellaneous car stuff. Solution: *rearranging* ...'kay.

The drawers were heavy. I recalled that the ad said there were folders inside. I started stuffing folders in the big IKEA bag to render the drawers carryable. I went and made sure the shoving path into the car was clear. (There was flat stuff in the trunk that needed moving to the side.) With some shoving and clanking, Belovedest walked it down the ramp from the porch, and we got it in the car.

The passenger seat couldn't fit me anymore. I eyed the space behind Belovedest's seat. I could fit, provided they set the insulated bag of cold groceries on my lap. And thus we drove home, and made sure to unload the cold groceries before the file drawers, since there'd be no energy left after that.

We got it into the house. Yellface was indignant about being shoved in the bathroom. Belovedest got it in place. alexseanchai gave it a good scrub. I started going through the folders and pulling out labels. I am absolutely giddy with delight (and endorphins, probably).