last week of the year

I love this week. It’s my favourite of the year and Stuart’s as well. Even the people who love us the most have had more than enough of our company over Christmas so we can indulge our preference for doing nothing, going nowhere and seeing nobody. I should perhaps say — in case you are worried — that it’s not that we don’t like people, it’s just that we are both such introverts that more than four people in a room at any one time seems like a crowd and requires serious recovery.

So this is our hibernation week, when we do our in depth recovering. It usually includes lots of outdoor walks, but this year that hasn’t been possible. It also includes dealing with the paperwork mountain which has been piling up all year. That might sound dreadful, but after 51 weeks of superficial management the paperwork mountain has become such a source of stress that it is a huge relief to tackle it. (I am aware that this begs the question of why we don’t deal with paperwork more regularly — well, we do deal with what needs to be done on the spot, like paying bills and so forth — but the filing and the archiving and the shredding is a job or three too much for the working calendar. Besides, I now rather look forward to doing it all in one go.)

What I should have done is take “before” photos, but you’ll just have to trust me that things were Very Bad Indeed. Now they look like this.

There’s the big desk…

…and there’s the computer desk…

…and there are several boxes like this one:

Actually, we don’t usually leave all our shredding to the last week of the year, but the old shredder conked out a wee while ago and we’ve only just got around to buying a new one.

So now I’m ready for the new year — perhaps even ready to go out to a Hogmanay party and share a room with large numbers of people. Tomorrow I will get out of the study and back into the loom room, just in time for new year’s looms.

“last week of the year” was posted by Cally on 31 Dec 2010 at http://callybooker.co.uk