The first week of the year is usually busy in a different way than the rest of the year. It is time to stick last year’s receipts and paperwork into a Bankers Box and stash it away with all the other boxes from previous years. After all taxpayers are advised to keep their paperwork for at least 3+ years … indefinitely to be on the save side. So in our case these boxes became part of the decoration.
The oldest box probably has an entire mini city inside… spiders, creepy crawlies, mildew … plus who knows what. I assume to them this is like living in a fancy metropolitan high rise. I wonder if anyone in the boxes is collecting rent. For all it matters there could be some sort of a hierarchy going on in there. Every time a new box is stacked on top, the invisible habitants must be celebrating; new rooms, fresh food…. Maybe they have a lottery of who can move into the newest floor first. Of course living that high up comes with dangers. The bottom box which is probably the most overpopulated one is more exposed to the elements. Everyone knows that moisture and paper are not a good combination. Plus, with all the partying that must be going on in that box it definitely is losing strength to support all the weight above. It is a well-known fact that if the foundation is not solid the entire building is in danger to collapse. As a matter of fact that applies to everything in life. A collapse would be disastrous.
And this is the sixth floor of “Box Tower”. I wonder who lives in there…
Imagine 9 boxes high, filled with all sort of papers and stuff… what a night mare. We don’t even want to think about it and yet year after year Caroline carefully stacks these boxes up in that corner. She tries to outsmart nature by stacking the boxes in a way that they would fall toward the wall. The wall is a good support and therefore there is not a lot of danger for all the creepy crawlies to loose their housing. Let’s be realistic, it is not a question of if the paper high rise collapses the question is when. Caroline hopes that she never will have to go into any of the bottom boxes to research anything, especially the one all the way on the floor. It is probably the most populated one and I am not talking only paper here. Me? Noooo, I definitely will keep my clean, white plastic paws out of any of these boxes. I don’t even want to be close to them and I am really not interested to go back into the record history.
Actually, in my opinion these creepy crawlies better count their blessings for now because with todays advanced technology they will be looking at a potential housing shortage very soon. More and more records are kept electronically. So in our case we will probably no longer stack boxes but collect CDs and DVDs which require a lot less space to keep. There are a lot of advantages in the electronic record keep; no major space requirement, no weight, only one item (the CD/DVD) to deal with etc.. However, the question is what if that CD/DVD becomes corrupt? How many years will this CD/DVD be good? Will computers in 20 years be able to read today’s files? What can be done during an electrical outage? So many questions…
Well, personally, I think there are plusses and minuses in both the old fashioned way and modern way of keeping records or anything for that matter. So for now we are stacking our life’s history into that corner and will deal with whatever is required in the future.
Let’s not forget we live today (the present) and Life is great!
Meet my ex-box. Today I am a happy guy who enjoys living outside the box…
