The papers I threw into my in-box the other day stayed there the rest of the week, just as I feared they would. I totally forgot about them. Despite having my in-box on top of my desk, it’s outside of my line of sight when I’m facing my computer, which is most of the day. So anything that lands in it is basically ‘out of sight, out of mind’ as far as my AD/HD brain is concerned. I know left-brained people (like my husband) don’t understand this concept. His paper and email in-boxes are always cleaned out, every day. Nothing sits or piles up- ever!

Before leaving for the day, I grabbed those papers out of the in-box and clipped a “To File” note to them. I put them next to my computer, where I’d be forced to look at them Monday morning. That way I can be assured they won’t lie there all next week, slowly being buried by new papers that land on top of them.

Speaking of always emptying an email in-box (oh, not mine, of course)– my husband deletes or prints out his emails every day, so his in-box is squeaky clean. The other day, he was trying to sign up for online banking at our new bank. I told him we already did that when we opened accounts there last fall– didn’t he get the confirmation email like I did? He checked his email and well– of course it wasn’t there. I searched my 1,200+ messages and found it within seconds (thanks to Yahoo’s email search box).

Ha! The Packrat strikes again! I proved that although I keep just about everything, I can usually find something somebody needs. People think I’m organized, but the real secret is that I never throw anything away. The trick is finding it when I need it…