Spring cleaning vs taxes

Personally, I grab the opportunity to clean my surroundings every Spring. Not quite so enthusiastically I also grab at doing my taxes. But they both have to be done so I divide my time between the two so as to maintain a reasonable amount of sanity. The Spring cleaning involves throwing stuff away that I saved for one purpose or another and every time I start to pitch an item I have to go through a whole mental scrubbing or I'll throw away something I need and can't replace. Yesterday I took on my computer software collection. Over the years an accumulation of programs and accessories built to massive proportions due to a swinging door of one antiquated computer after another. I think I found a floppy disk containing Windows 1978. Well, maybe not quite but almost. The computers are gone, however I felt a need to keep that junk, just in case! Putting my fears aside I waded through and filled one box after another to send to the recyclers and put them in the truck for dropping off on the way home. I really made a dent in the pile of useless materials. Finally the drawers, cabinets and shelves were cleared and tidy. Ready for a new influx of computer brick a brack I didn't know what to do with but was afraid to throw away. Feeling quite victorious after such a major accomplishment I set myself to attacking the year end tax situation. Things were going quite well for about an hour, then I came across an empty packet where some extremely vital information was supposed to be. It dealt with the tax record bookkeeping computer program I was working on. I was struck speechless. Where was the information? Ah, it was still lodged in the computer, I simply forgot to print it out I guess. I opened the drawer where the memory backup for the program was located, at least that was where it was supposed to be. Not there! Panic time! I had just cleaned that drawer and thrown out all kinds of stuff. Did I throw out that too? I looked everywhere in that area. Not there! I looked again. Not there! Oh my goodness, it must be in the truck, I thought. I proceeded to take everything back out of the truck, one box at a time, remove the entire contents, going through each and every piece. I examined the whole lot. After an hour and a half of searching, Not there! Vital information needed for completing my taxes was missing and looking more and more like it is gone. I had searched every possible location. I could not for the life of me remember where I could possibly have placed it. Woe is me, woe is me. All is lost........................!

Not being one to sit idly by and feel sorry for myself, I decided to take action and began the process of creating an entirely new, hand written record of transactions I needed to complete my taxes. I opened the drawer I originally thought the back up program was in and the entire program and packet of information fell from behind the divider that was stuck to the handle. Just another day in the life of a pack rat. All better now. I wish you a much less complicated day.