Taming the Paper Beast

Before we moved into this house, I took it upon myself to tackle our files. I shreded and sorted and organized and filed like there was no tomorrow. And what emerged was a two drawer filing cabinet and one wood crate filled very neatly with a rainbow of hanging file folders. A few months later we moved and the hubby and I talked about buying a real filing cabinet. One which would hold all of our paperwork. Only...the hubby didn't really want to spend the money. So we waited. And while we waited all of our files have been going into "The Box". As you can imagine, 2.5 years of bank statements, bills, and other miscellaneous "important should file" stuff makes quite a stack and our little banker's box was overflowing. (This is clearly a problem because it disturbs the all important geological layering method of sorting.)

When we decided to re-finance the house (interest rates have dropped an entire point, y'all!) the hubby went digging through the box to find some of the required documentation. And you know what? He found it really irritating. Irritating enough that he actually sat down and went through that entire box and sorted everything. (I am so proud of him. Usually I am the one who just can't take it anymore.)

And so we came back to the idea of a filling cabinet. I loved the idea of getting a cabinet we could sit under the window and put some cushions on. I figured that way it would be a filling cabinet AND a cat perch. : )

Then I discovered this. An ottoman/bench/file storage. It was love at first sight. Not only would it be a cat perch, but it also doesn't have to remain a filing cabinet. So when, someday, everything goes paperless, we can junk the old paper copies and have a nice chest for blankets or whatever else.

An unexpected side effect of this purchase was the sudden decorating decisions we had to make. You see the filing cabinet would be going in the rec room. Last we left that, we were thinking of a purple and brown scheme. With perhaps an accent color. Well the ottoman top comes upholstered, so we needed to pick a color. The base was brown and they didn't have a solid purple in the fabrics we liked, so it was accent color time.

(Let me just take this moment to say. I love my husband. He is so steady about these sorts of things. I can reach paralysis, worried about making the wrong decision. He? Just goes for it. LOVE HIM. So much. ♥)

We decided to go with a green and eventually narrowed it down to two--a not quite lime green and a not quite celery green (you can see them above, though the colors are a bit off. And yes, we were using a picture of the couch fabric to guide our decision. And yes, the store happened to have paint chips on hand!). I was drawn to the brighter green but worried it might date. In the end, the hubby called it and we went with the bright green!

Sometime in mid April (the fabric was back ordered) we will have a shiny new home for our files (and a spot for kitty butts). Now we just have to keep the filing straight until then...