TAX TIME IS HERE

 Well here it is again – tax season!  I am sure I have must have mentioned this, but just in case I haven't – I am an accountant.  Not a big fancy one such as you see in movies or on TV, but a small practice practice one.  To give you an idea of what I mean – a friend of mine was marrying a CPA – he said he worked for a small firm – the sort of companies which only have a bookkeeper to deal with keeping track of expenses, deposits, etc (keeping the books as it is called).  He thought he was working with clients like mine as his clients did not have full bookkeeping department.  I laughed and explained that to me that was a large company – if my clients had a bookkeeper  a set of books beyond their checkbooks I considered them a big company!

Over the last couple of decades my practice has shrunk – I am down to one business client (plus my husband and my craft business – which I do the accounting as the owner) and 4 tax clients - one of whom is a dear friend and I have to annoy her again as she has not filed a return in 3 years and will be losing her refund on the oldest return if she does not file that return by April 15 this year.  It is enough work for me to still be able to say that I am accountant and these clients, with the exception of my friend, have been with my father or my prior boss for decades and decades.  In one case I do a tax return for the daughter of one of my dad's old business clients – first work I did in accounting when I was 12 was adding up the payroll of her father for my father.  So the annual contacts between the clients and myself is a good deal of catching up the year that passed on a personal level.  Oh, one client died last year.  His son/executor said that I would still be doing his return this year – but I have not heard from him and am guessing that his accountant will be doing his dad's final returns.  That cuts down the number of clients I have by one.

I have finished one return so far this year and I am good way along with a second return.  Still waiting to get the info for the third return – and of course my friend needs a bit of pushing (why should she lose out on her refund).  Somehow with the pandemic – even with keeping me in the house most of the time – it is harder to do the returns these years.  I have also done the business client's return – it was due by March 15 not April 15 – and started on our business return.

What does this have to do with organizing?  I have to fit all of this into my schedule in addition to everything normal I do.  I have to get the returns done on time – which means early enough for me to mail the returns to clients and allow them time to review the returns and mail them out in a timely manner.  

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
DON'T wait until the last minute!  Get your taxes prepared early – you can always hold until the last minute to mail out.  (If you need to – find out which Post Offices near you will be open late on April 18 and will postmarking the late mail  - yes, this year one has until the 18th to file their taxes. When I had a lot of clients, inevitably, several would need to file extensions and my husband would drive me late on April 15 to that post office and sit outside in the car as there would not be any parking available due to people filing their taxes at the last minute – my dad always said that at the main Post Office in Brooklyn employees would be outside with sacks for people to drop their taxes into, so they did have keep the actual office open late.)

When going late on April 15 to mail out I have seen any number of people standing in the Post Office filling out their taxes forms leaning on the walls as they are that late – don't let that be you!

USING YOUR CELL PHONE CALENDAR TO GET AND STAY ORGANIZED - IN THE HOUSE AND FOR SHOPPING TRIPS

 We are expecting another large snowstorm this coming weekend.  I have been checking to make sure we will have the food we will need if it does snow.  In the interim we will get one or two days with heavy rain – and husband does not like to drive in same these days, so we will need to make a food run tomorrow I guess.  

In the interim I pulled 4 slices of white bread and 2 of rye from the freezer.  This would allow us to have sandwiches as they will be defrosted when we need them.  Husband HATES frozen bread.  I don't like it, but deal with it better than he does.  

Due to my switch in cell phones (and, yes, I still hate the new one – it will have to do something to redeem itself to change my mind) I am not even sure which app I am suppose to be using for my shopping list as I now have 3 different memo apps!  In years past (before the pandemic) I would keep my shopping list in my various (over the years) cell phone.  One never forgets it that way and if suddenly while out it is decided to food shop – there it is!  During the most of the pandemic I did not want to have to take my phone out in public, so  I had a small piece of paper on the fridge and wrote down what we needed to buy.  More recently I have gone back to having my list in my phone – I also add non-food items from around the house this way as the phone generally travels around the house with me.  (Not that I get a lot of phone calls or texts, but husband likes me to have it with me in case I fall “and can't get up”.  No, he would not hear me screaming, but that is another story all together.)  Hopefully I will remember which app I used – yes, I am starting to get that old.  

We bought a set of new sheets and pillowcases.  We had 2 sets of white and one of light beige as we bought same when had bedbugs – easy to see the bugs on the bedding if it is of a light color.  Unfortunately over the ensuing 10 plus years it has also been easier to see the stains on them.  We bought tan sheets – light enough to see bedbugs on it but dark enough to hide the stains – and no, after we got the bedbugs that time we have not had any sense – but whether that means we can relax or if it means our hard work at avoiding them has worked we don't know.  Then again, my leading culprit for where they came from is a tax client of mine and he moved out of state and is no longer a client.  Husband helped me changing the bedding.  I hate changing bedding more than other job.  Being short I also have short arms and I have figured out that is why I hate changing bedding – my arms are too short to deal with queen sized sheets and blankets easily.  Husband helped this time (either the first or second time in 40+ years of marriage – he may have helped when I made the bed made up before we got married for when we returned home.  (Good thing it was – we got home in the wee hours of the morning and would have ended up sleeping on an unmade bed.)  It made it a bit easier.  I guess I will ask him to help from now on.  

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
How do you use your electronic devices to help you organize?  In addition to my shopping list in my cell phone I have reminders for chores which need to be done – including weekly reminders to take out garbage, do the laundry – even run backups on my computers.  The phone calendar you always have with you (you know you do) should be used to help you get and stay organized – use its alarms to remind you.   

CHRISTMAS PUT AWAY + DEALING WITH A NEW CELL PHONE AGAINST MY WILL

Done storing away Christmas last week. 
Due to the discontinuation of some 4G cell phone systems (which is not being mentioned in public releases - only 3G is being mentioned).  I have spent much of the past 2 weeks getting and being disappointed in a new cell phone.  The organization of my life depends on my cell phones.  Yes, cell phones. One is the only one which actually phone service, but I like the calendar in my original cell phone (a Palm Centro, the first smartphone) much better and continue to use it for same.  I like the games in the Blackberry I had after it, so it is still around for the games.  Now my first Android will join them in traveling around the house and on trips as it sooooo much better than my new one. 
My husband had assured me that "everything would like the same".  The poor man has spent the better part of 2 weeks trying to make that true - and it is not and the new one is terrible, but apparently most is due to software changes.  So my last one gets to stay in use in the house for what the new one either does not do or makes doing much harder - and that is true of most things in the new phone including making phone calls which the older one cannot be used for except by calling through the Internet as it no longer has service. 
This has thrown my organization into a tizzy.  One example - recently, since I feel comfortable again taking my cell phone out in public places - I had gone back to putting my shopping list in it (when one's phone is always with one, it cannot be forgotten).  Right now I am not ready to try to using the phone for the shopping list so I used the same spreadsheet I have used most of the pandemic.  I wrote out what needed to buy in the aisle order they are in the store.  I did not print it out right away as I wanted to add anything husband wanted.  Between when I finished the list and when he came down for pre-bed snack - the entire list disappeared and I had trouble finding my master list of where foods are located!!  I had to make a second shopping list from memory and hope I did not live anything out - which was the purpose of the first list which was collected as we found we needed to replace some food item - put us at going to bed an hour even later than normal.  (Used the list when we went shopping today and will know soon enough if we forgot to relist something and did not buy it.)
I use my assortment of cell phones (remember only one actually has service and can make calls) to keep my organized - from reminders ringing to shopping list it helps me.  I even had to rename items in the calendar - for example, I have a reminder for every day at 6:45 pm to stop what I am doing and start cooking dinner.  Dinner is what we call this meal and it is our main meal of the day.  In the new cell phone a picture showed up because it said "dinner".  I had to change it to "supper" to get rid of teh picture - despite that we do not call it that.  Same thing - any item which says "birthday" has a picture of a party - why would they do such a stupid, inane, annoying thing!  I have to go through my calendar and change these entries also!!  Why change something when it works well to something this annoying!!
My poor husband has been breaking his back trying to make everything comfortable for and usable by me and I feel so terrible that he has to do spend so much of his time doing so.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Aw, heck - my only thought this week is how annoyed I am about this phone!

CHRISTMAS ALMOST ALL STORED AWAY

 

Well my storage of our Christmas items has progressed. I have put away all 3 regular trees, the Christmas figures (Santas, elves…) that we put out in the living room (most were Christmas gifts from someone husband worked with – one small plastic Santa goes back to when husband was a boy and one elf I sewed and entered in the local tri-county County Fair), and a set of bear figurines that I put out by the month – December is boxed and stored and when I finish putting away the rest of Christmas I will put out the February bears from that set – they go in the corner display unit in our living room (this is NOT part of the Teddy Village I talk about – that is upstairs). (BTW – I store the Christmas bear figurines to this set in holiday design boxes which are sold to store photographs. When the figurines are all put out the boxes are empty and put them under the big Christmas tree in the living room as set dressing of presents as we do not get many Christmas presents – husband buys himself a couple of things and gives them to me to wrap and I do not get any presents – don't need more stuff around the house. But the tree so looked so lonely without any gifts so this way it looks cheerful with (empty boxes as) gifts under it during the entire season.)

The ornaments from the trees has progressed and are boxed and waiting to go downstairs – it is a tall set of steps so as I go down on trips I take the boxes down – second box will go down when I go down to change laundry loads shortly and third will follow later when I go down to bring up the laundry – that leaves one box to go down tomorrow.

I have to pack the assorted small decorations – candles, “greens”, mugs, Lego Christmas figures, and the like in the 2 boxes they store in. These two boxes will be stored on top of the ornament boxes – all of which go in a corner of the basement which is a perfect fit for them.

I have beaded Christmas tree which I made some years ago and is in a glass dome, as well as a large light up teddy bear and the wreath for our front door which will go on top of the stack of boxes.

I have a number of soft decorations – small stuffed toys, as well as items I have embroidered – other stuffed toys, wall hangings, holiday throw pillows, and such. They will go down last to their box which is elsewhere in the basement.

I do have great incentive to get the tree and the items which go on top of it quickly – I can't do the laundry until I put away these items as assorted items which are stored in front of these items are moved to the top of the washer and dryer to get the items out for Christmas – and I had to get them put away – Wednesday night is laundry night! Second load washing first load drying – and a load of Covid masks to follow.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

While it is much more fun to take out the Christmas (or other seasonal) decorations – it is not as much fun to put them away – but it must done so go ahead and get it done – it is February after all!

SNOW!!!!!!

 Oops – I thought I posted last week – but when I looked at my copy of saved posts – last week's post was blank.

I did start taking the ornaments off the trees – but got sidetracked by snow – plus somehow I am missing 2 ornaments and broke one.

We have had SNOW!  We had about 18 inches, while to the east of us it was close to 24 inches.  This is suppose to be the 3rd highest amount of snow in the area – so those of you who read this and think “2 feet – big deal” will understand.

The storm started late Friday night – before it started coming down the county plow/sander trucks put down salt mixture on our street to keep the snow from sticking as much.  

Per the newscast husband likes, when we went to bed the night before (Thursday night) we were to get 6-12 inches.  Since we are towards the west side of our county and the county west of us was to have up to 6 inches and the county to the east of us was to have 12 and up inches – we sort of figured we would get be getting towards the low end of the 6-12 inches.  Husband falls asleep much quicker than I do and when I checked the weather again a couple of hours later we had been upgraded to 8-12 inches.  He was in a panic straight through the week in anticipating of any snow – let alone this much. When we woke on Friday morning  - anticipated snow amounts from the storm had been raised and our area could get as much as 20 inches!!  He was very upset and nervous.  

When we came home on Thursday we had parked our car as close to the sidewalk as we could so in an emergency we could just clear out behind it and back out of the driveway – this is not easy to do, remember we live on 4 lane main road -  but we do so with our RV – I stand in the street with a walkie talkie and tell him when to pull out.  

It snowed – and it snowed – and it snowed.  We guess that by the end of the storm late Saturday we had 16-18 inches of snow. The general advice on the weather reports was to wait until Sunday to clear the snow as it was fluffy, light snow and would remain same.  After the snow stopped on Saturday we heard a snowblower close by – looked out and a man was clearing our sidewalk.  He went on to clear our two driveway cuts and run the blower one trip through our semi-circular drive – he also cleared the sidewalk in front of the house north of us – and then he went across the street to the one house there which faces our street.  Our best guess is that he is the neighbor who lives 2 hours south of us – we met him once, during another bad snowstorm when he was helping the neighbor in the house between us as her husband has medical problems.  I am am going to mail a note to him thanking him (hope it was him).  

Sunday we went out and cleared the snow remaining in front of our house.  It only took us about 2 hours and husband felt much more comfortable and better as we could easily get out of our driveway in an emergency.  

Since the salting process Thursday night we had not seen anyone from the county come through – no plow – the road on Sunday had one lane centered on the two lanes that actually exist in each direction which had been worn through the snow by vehicles traveling on the road.  

Sometime between when we went to bed on Saturday night around 4 am and when we woke up Sunday (early afternoon) the plow finally had come through.  Both cuts of our driveway now had about 3 ft of heavy, packed snow in them!  

We ate a quick lunch, dressed in heavy winter clothing and went out to again clear the cuts.  We were working at it – using a light duty snow blower,  snow shovels and a metal spade shaped garden shovel (to slice/hit the packed snow and break it loose).  Husband was just this side of crying.  Then a miracle.  In the 30+ years we have lived no one has stopped to help us before the neighbor went through with his snow blower  - a fellow in a pickup trip with a snow plow on the front saw our situation and came to help – he drove his snow plow into the packed snow on one of our driveway cuts – the “exit” side no vehicles parked there.  The broken up snow we could deal with.  He was then going to do the same with the “entrance” side of our driveway,  but -

The plow was coming through again – he was waiting across the street to come back, but someone got out of the plow truck and talked to him and apparently told him he had to leave!  

So the cut we had just cleared had snow in it again and we still had the second cut to clear.  We recleared this cut (and we have to be careful not to block the adjacent driveway of our neighbor, about 2 ft away from ours, when we clear ours).  We then went to the other side – husband pushed our snowblower into the snow again and again and would break apart part of what was there until we able to clear a path through the packed snow that looked wide enough for the car to fit through.  

Well, it is wide enough if we make a left turn into the driveway from across the street so that we come in straight.  Monday he cleared a bit more away from our “exit” cut so we could leave on a bit of an angle.  

More snow might be coming early to mid week next week!  

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
One can only do their best – we still have a lot of untouched snow around the driveway near our house as we did not need it cleared.  

Sometimes “angels” appear to help.

STILL SCANNING INSTRUCTIONS - AND - ABOUT TO START TAKING DOWN INDOOR CHRISTMAS

 Sorry to miss posting last week (again) somehow I “lost” Wednesday.

Been doing more instruction manual scanning. In addition since the last time I bought new USB flash stick drives was 2019 I need to buy new ones for at least some purposes as they do become less reliable if overwritten again and again. My husband should enjoy this – he will get to wander around in the chain computer store (which is technically up the street from us – albeit at least a mile away and in another community) when we go to buy them. The ones I need are not expensive especially since we buy the store's house brand of them. I will then copy the info on my older ones to the newer ones and have the older ones to use for “junk” storage.

It is now time for us to start taking down our indoor Christmas decorations. Tree will have ornaments removed and stored in their boxes, the lights removed, and then the tree will be disassembled and it all will be stored away in various places in the basement. The other decorations generally “visit” us a bit longer – but not much. Have you started (or maybe even finished) storing away your Christmas decorations? At least one house locally still has its outside lights on.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Please keep yourselves safe from Covid as it makes its comeback.

 or

Have to go finish the dishes now.

COVID 19 #30 - USING YOUR TIME STUCK AT HOME TO WORK ON ORGANIZING

 Welcome to 2022.  

2020 and 2021 have not been easy years for any of us.  We all hoped that by now life would be back to close to normal, if not fully normal.  But we seem to be mostly starting over – again.  

So how have you been using your time at home?  Have you been working on decluttering and organizing your home – or your life or you have been sitting and watching things on your TV?  

I have been trying to catch up on decluttering.  I am close to finishing a project to scan instruction  manuals, warranty papers, travel information, etc. onto flash stick drives to use in my computer.  (We keep all data on same not on our hard drives.)  I back up daily and weekly onto other flash stick drives and monthly onto an external hard drive – just in case. I did go through the travel brochures, old travel ticket stubs, and maps when I started this project.  I kept very few - I consulted with my husband about many of these items.  I scanned items (not maps – except some of those handout maps from various communities we visit often) we decided to keep onto the flash drive I take with us when traveling (can be used in our laptops while traveling).  In a number of cases we checked to see if the attraction that the brochure was for still existed – a very nice restaurant in a community towards the western side of Virginia that we had been to a couple of times – decades ago – still exists, menu is different (it was in the brochure) and the prices are higher – so it was scanned and kept as we hope to head in that direction again. Three hanging folders emptied and the papers recycled.

I have been working on instruction manuals/papers and warranties more recently.  I had one overstuffed hanging folder just for same for our RV.  I have scanned this onto a special stick flash drive so they can be taken with us when we travel – something we could not do with the large number of manuals and warranty papers themselves (it is a VERY small RV.)  I am almost finished with this project.  I will then go back to see what else I can scan and toss or just toss from the drawer.  

In addition to getting rid of all of these physical papers it is now much easier to actually find the item needed.  Before I would I open the filing drawer – bottom of two – and have to lean down to see in the drawer – when I do this my eyeglasses swing forward (and sometimes fall off) so I have to grab them and hold them where they help me see what is the file drawer.  Now I just put the flash drive in a computer – if none are running, turn on the computer and I can quickly find the needed information – and if the print is too small (especially for husband if he is the one looking) I can make it larger and easier to read.  

Of course some instruction manuals are just TOO BIG for this and are being kept in the drawer they were in.  

You do have a scanner for your computer – don't you?  One of the best things to help organize papers.  I wrote about same way back in October 2016  to see the article -

 http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2016/10/scanners-and-printers-and-how-to-use.html

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

What projects have you been working on while home?  Have you been using your time wisely or just wasting it?