The Simple Office:Going Paperless

Another one of my "Stacks" of documents

Stuff, like most people I have a love hate realationship with Stuff. As a lawyer by day, a reader, a collector, and the owner of a scrapbooking paper company, I have collected lots and lots of papers. Add in the fact that we live overseas and are required to file taxes in not one, but two Countries and one State, add in the fact that the kids bring home stacks and stacks of paperwork from school. Add in the mail (which thankfully we don’t get much of) and my un-natural desire to save old magazines, recipes and ideas and you end up with a whole lot of CRAP.

One set of our shelves and one memo board (my side mirrors this)

The company I work for is a big proponant of the 5S system, which works for manufacturing facilities, but is a bit harder to convert into an office. My office at the factory, well that is already clean. It is the home office that has multiple shelves, drawers, surfaces and desks filled with paper.

My Husband's Desk

I am not advocating a full purge (that is a Minimalist plan and not my bag) and for me baby steps are key, but I have taken another step at removing all of the unneeded papers from our home. Stage One is the home office. I spent some $ on a real scanner a Fujitsu Scansnap1500, which is probably more than the average home needs, but I need to scan papers for work and my old flat bed just doesn’t cut it. So, after bringing home my new toy, I scanned in over 6 inches of paper, threw out 5 empty binders and recycled all of the paper. This took just over 2 hours. I then uploaded a bunch to Evernote and stored the rest on an external hard drive. A rough estimate of the pages scanned was around 500 and I easily have another 8-9 binders filled with seminar notes to scan (at least another 500 sheets of paper) plus 10 years of old tax records (which we have kept as we file in multiple jurisdictions and they each require specific records).

The First Stack of Scanned Documents

I estimate if I spend this weekend scanning and then one more weekend organizing the files both “online” and in the hard drive I should be down to only one drawer of physical papers left in the office. This puts me square in line for my goal of cleaning up the office in January. After the “paper” is gone I can work on the rest of the stuff, which is primarily my scrapbook/art supplies. The final step is to load all of the family geneology stuff online into a Dropbox for my sister so she can access the information as well.

The remainder of the house, well that is for another month.

Travel and my Simple Living Goals for 2011

Beaches of Phuket

I was asked today, and I thought it was a good question, how do I balance my love and desire for travel with a simple living philosophy. I have always thought it is about experience, living life to the fullest and grabbing the bull by the horns. See, we live in Asia. We (my husband and I) were born and raised in the US and we never left the US until we were both in College. Since that time we have traveled a lot, but compared to a European, the US centric mindset is one of "stay at home". I travel mostly for work, but quite a bit for personal pleasure and for the kids’ greater "cultural" experience.

When I was a kid, I admired my Aunt Moyna and Uncle Bob and the fact they spent money every year (at least it seemed like it) to travel to Europe or Hawaii or other far off places. They took their three kids to Ireland to visit with Monya's family. They went to Europe and traveled around; they traveled around the US and saw sights I still haven't seen. What I also vividly remember is the fact they didn't spend money on "new stuff" for their house. Now, Bob and Moyna had a wonderful house in California, but there were no "new furnishings while the old ones worked. The old cars were not upgraded every year or two, the "old" ones worked just fine. This became a model for me I think and impressed me more than I realized until just frequently. I think in some ways they were my inspiration for simple living. . I have started a new website to promote my families travel experience Vagabond Kids and I don't plan on slowing down our travel over the next year. Travel is important to us and is one of the reasons I want to be better at living frugally.

Sunset in Thailand

We spend more on travel than any other single non-essential item. I really do need a new couch, but the old one is okay. While a new Oriental rug for my living room would also be nice, it is the same amount as what I would spend on a trip to India with the whole family. While travel can cost a bomb, we can do better at Travel Hacking, in order to go further on our travel dollar. All of that being said, there are always things that I could be doing better and this is second point I want to make today, it is time to set my 2011 expectations. There is more I want to do; more I need to do to live simply. I could be living more frugally, I could be giving back more, I could be living lighter on the earth, I could be eliminating all un-needed items from my life and I could be connecting with my real self, rather than the one I have fallen into for work.

This year, I am establishing some hard and fast goals to make my life a better place and hopefully make a small stab at making the world better. So each month I am tackling three new challenges. One goal a month that leads towards inner simplicity and one goal towards outer simplicity and one that leads to either better health or a better environment.

So, without further adieu, here are my goals for the next few months (subject of course to change). I promise I will post each month statements related to my progress.

Buddhist Temple- Korea

January 2011

Outer Simplicity Goal: Clear the clutter in my home office and get all documents scanned/loaded to Evernote/ and or tossed into the recycle bin.

Inner Simplicity Goal: Review some of my old materials on Simple Living. Check in with the core principles I thought I believed in and reevaluate and revise.

Health Goal: Continue on the road to recovery (2010 saw me with wrist surgery, Gallbladder removal and my thyroid condition less stable). Step One is participation in a Year of 30 day Challenges and this month’s goal is consuming less alcohol as a step towards moderation in all things. Starting today and for the rest of January (with one exception my 45 birthday) I will not consume more than one glass of alcohol a day.

What A Year

Photo from koalazymonkey on Flickr


It has been quite a year. One that has been filled with excitement and frustrations. One that saw a house fill with too much stuff, be pared back, and then fill itself up again. One that saw a mom work too much, get frustrated and start to look for that which makes her heart sing. One that saw a dad get excited about a project and a business which keep him as busy as he wants to be. A change in one business and the possible collaboration on starting some new ones. One that saw a return to values that we believe in and a goal to working down those paths. New friends and old have come through our lives and made it richer. A year of personal triumphs and major medical setbacks. Amazing travels and the joy of staying home. Not a simple year. No, not at all. But one that was savored for every bit of juiciness that it brought. So, as the holidays are approaching and I am not on the road, here is a photo montage of the year. The slide show is about 3 minutes...enjoy.

Let's see now

It has been a long strange trip. My time is spent on the road most of the time. My dreams of downshifting are sidelined by too many things to do, kids in school, hubby working for a startup to follow his dreams. A bunch of medical things going on, but while life has been not simple, I don't lose hope of the fact that it can and will happen. I will slow down again. I assume I have a few more months of intense travel and then I will be able to cut back, or find another way.

I will be back here too, when I can. But you can follow us as we try to gather information about our passion for traveling with the kids over here on Vagabondkids.

Peace

Life Sucks- A recap of the last 10 weeks

Sometimes life throws you a curve ball. Sometimes it also gives you lemons. And sometimes life comes up, smacks you in the face and says "take this you stinkin' bitch!"... The latter has been the last 10 weeks for me.










While continuing my every other week trip to Kuala Lumpur for work, in Mid April my backaches started getting worse. They were pretty localized in one place and it seemed very odd. The first week of April, I was in KL and was dying. I was in so much pain I could hardly stand it. Massage didn't work, I was feeling sick, just overall was not doing good. So I went to the doctor at the company and she took a good look at me. She gave me some great news... I fit 3 of the 4 "F"s which increase my risk for Gallstones. The 4 F's are 40, female, fertile and fat... I will leave it to your imagination which of the three I fall into...but anyway after some photo therapy, and lots of Advil the pain went away. I came back to Singapore, visited a local doctor to undergo some tests (in between another trip to KL and multiple end of school year functions for the kids) and had to go through multiple rounds of blood work and ultrasound on the gallbladder. They saw two small stones but figured they were both very small and wouldn't cause any pain.



Take that!




















All along I am continuing to work 60-70 hour weeks, doing end of school year stuff with the kids, trying to find 8 boxes of product I shipped to the US that was slow to arrive and keep sane.

Early May, I fly back to KL for two separate trips and then I then flew to the US for a two week business trip. While I was only at home a total of 10 days that month, the trip back to the States was good. I felt good (no pain), busy, connected with my co-workers but then it happened again. The last day before I flew back to Singapore I woke up with a backache again. I knew that I was passing another gallstone and I just hoped it would wait until I got back home. It didn't. Thursday morning, 5am wake up call to get to the airport, return the car and I feel like crap on a cracker. Fever, aches, chills, back ache to end all back aches. Yep, I was in the full on pass-a-gallstone mode. From the time before i knew this could last for 2 or 3 days and what was my choice. i was going home.

I came home, landed on Saturday at 2am went to the doctor later that morning at 10 and got a referral to an internal medicine/general surgeon for Monday. He did my tests again and scheduled me for surgery the following Monday. It was a bit of a rushed surgery as I couldn't do it that week (I had to be in KL on Tuesday-Thursday) and we wanted to be ready to fly home to the US on the 20th.

Surgery happened on June 7. I am discharged Wednesday the 9th. At 3am Declan wakes up with a side ache and screaming in pain. Jeff takes him to the doctor at 9am Thursday when they open, he gets medicines and doesn't see any big improvements. Saturday night at 3am his fever goes up the 39 C (about 103) so Sunday off to the doctor again at 9am. Doctor sends us straight to the hospital... Declan has walking Pneumonia and a serious case at that. Other than a small cough on Monday-Tuesday, he was mostly symptom free until Wednesday.

So, Declan is in hospital, I am supposed to still be on medical leave (like that was going to happen, I took 3 days off)...and our trip to California is now in question. He has to be in hospital and on IV meds for 7 days and our flight was scheduled for the 20th. Long story coming to a close, we can't rebook tickets because we were using miles/points until July 7th. Our much planned for summer home has been cut short by 17 days and will cost us an additional 1000 dollars for the shorter stay.

Obviously the health of our child is the most important thing, that is why we did change the trip, but we had been planning the "summer" home for 2 years. In 11 years overseas we have never spent more than 3 weeks at home and this was our one chance at doing that. This was the thing I was able to hold out and say, okay so you have been working your ass off... in only 3 more months you will be able to take an extended leave and be able to enjoy summer in the States. When I scheduled my surgery, I was cool as ice. Wasn't worried... it was all okay, because in 2 weeks I was going home... When Declan was admitted, it was okay because after 5 days in hospital we were going to come home pack up and leave for the US on Sunday. That all came crashing down and I lost it. I hate this. This is not what I signed up for.


I have come to the recognition though that something has to go. There is too much on my plate. I know what will be cut, but it is painful to do so and I will make that announcement this summer after the break. Other things may go as well, but I am not sure yet. The thing is there has always been a goal and end game plan for all of this work, the goal has been to get a cushion, a savings plan... a nest egg to provide for us. I find the more I work the less I save and the more I hate my life. The last 10 weeks have been some of the most challenging, heart wrenching, stressful and pain filled weeks of my life.


time to practice what I preach and slow down, find balance again and do what I need to do.