Paper Doll

Slam the Scam! Organize to Protect Against Scams

Posted on: March 4th, 2024 by Julie Bestry | 18 Comments

Rotary Phone Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

Being organized and productive depends on having systems in place. The problem is that sometimes things happen that throw all of our carefully curated systems out the window. Things like getting the flu, having your car break down (or get stolen), your computer crashing — or getting scammed. 

It’s shockingly easy to fall for a scam, and frustratingly difficult to recover financially and legally after being a victim. It may require time, money, the services of specialists (like attorneys) and more. The best thing you can do is to organize yourself to protect against being victimized.

SCAMMERS PREY ON EVERYONE

You may have heard about a recent viral article in The Cut by Charlotte Cowles, the online magazine’s financial advice columnist. You wouldn’t have expected someone with that professional identity to write a column entitled, The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger. But she fell for a scam, and she fell hard. And now, risking public and professional embarrassment, she has spoken out. 

For weeks, there’s been debate online regarding what happened to Cowles. Many people can’t imagine that a grown woman with a professional background in financial writing could have been fooled by the ring of scammers who convinced Cowles that they were representatives of Amazon, of the Federal Trade Commission, and of the CIA.

But scams are real, they are everywhere, and we need to organize ourselves (and warn our loved ones) to be vigilant. Gallup found that 15% of American households were victims of financial scams just last year.

Graph provided by Gallup

And, while we tend to think of victims as being older, every demographic group is at risk. In fact, younger adults (like Gen Z and the youngest Millennials) are overrepresented as victims of scamming (at 22%); meanwhile Gen Xers like Paper Doll and Baby Boomers are somewhat less likely to be scammed, at 9% and 14%, respectively.

The rate of victimization is lower among adults without a college education and with lower incomes than those who have college educations and who earn at least $50,000 per year. One might surmise that both of the latter groups have more opportunity to be warned and prepared to identify elements of scams. 

But people with education, experience, savvy, and money can also be scammed. Last month, author Cory Doctorow wrote How I Got Scammed, explaining how a Christmas holiday travel week, a failed ATM transaction, and the post Alaska Air 737 Max door-plug disaster created a perfect storm for him being taken advantage by a phone-phishing fraudster pretending to be from his credit union.

Sometimes, a scam is obvious. Out of nowhere, you’ll be cooking or watching TV and the phone will ring. A mysterious and heavily accented speaker will say that there is “something seriously wrong with your Microsoft computer.” It doesn’t matter if you actually have a Mac, or if you don’t even have a computer. They’ll use that wearily patient voice so identifiable as IT customer support.

You immediately know it’s fake; but would your grandparents? Would your teenager? 

Other scams are less obvious because they come wrapped in the kind of tech-related language we see every day. In just the 24 hours prior to writing this post, Paper Doll and Paper Mommy experience attempted scams.

I received an email claiming that I’d purchased $500+ in services, and if had not made those purchases, I should immediately click to be connected with the company’s fraud department. Of course, merely hovering my cursor over the return email address (displayed as the company’s name) showed it was actually sent by gibberishletters@Yahoo.com. Real companies don’t use Yahoo addresses; in theory, they shouldn’t even use Gmail addresses. Dependable companies have their own domains.

Meanwhile, Paper Mommy got the all-too-common email advising her to click because her iCloud was full. [Be assured, her iCloud was not full. It has a backup of her iPad and probably a few dozen photos and not much more.] Paper Mommy may be 87, but she is one smart cookie, and even if she hadn’t received one of these same phishing attempts previously, she knows enough to verify such things.

However, it’s common enough to get random notification texts, popups, and emails claiming that something is awry. One of the immediate clues is bad spelling, grammar, or punctuation, something that older generations are more likely to take seriously; a 50- or 70-year-old is more likely to immediately realize that a poor command of English (in an email sent, ostensibly, by an American company to an American customer) is a sign of a scam. Thus, given the propensity of younger people for text-speak and a lesser reliance on standard usage, younger adults might be more easily tripped up.

Still other scams prey on the inclination of individuals to be good natured. One popular scam comes in the guise of a text regarding a sick or injured dog. The sender addresses you by the wrong name and says that they’re at the vet; their dog won’t eat and is whimpering, and they’re waiting for assistance. I “fell” for such a scam a few months ago, in that I replied and said, “Sorry, you have the wrong person. I hope everything turns out OK for you and the dog.”

Sad Doggie Photo by Bruno Cervera at Pexels

I thought nothing more of it until the person kept texting and trying to inveigle me in conversation, asserting that I must be a dog lover, too. (Readers, while I’d hate for you to think I’m a Disney villainess, I’m not fond of animals in person, though I do love monkeys, puppies, kittens, and penguins, as long as they’re on my device screens and nowhere near me.)

I Googled, and immediately found that this is a long-running scam to convince text recipients to get emotionally enmeshed in the condition of the dog, and end up giving money. One can understand how Congressman George Santos managed to set up fake Go Fund Me accounts for animal care and steal the proceeds. People are softies and want to be kind.

We’re also inclined to be law-abiding. There have been a number of jury duty scams where recipients get calls or texts saying that there’s a bench warrant for them to be arrested because they have not shown up for jury duty. Sometimes, recipients are warned that deputies are on the way to arrest them unless they pay a fee over the phone, or buy gift cards and send them to the caller.

Government agencies don’t text you out of the blue. In most cases, none but teeny, hyper-local government offices will even email. They certainly don’t take payment in gift cards. 

Scams are designed to prey on your lack of experience or information, your good nature, and your fear of getting in trouble (as with Cowles’ example). Do not let scammers waste your time, ruin your productivity, or take advantage of your goodwill.

SOCIAL SECURITY: SLAM THE SCAM DAY

The Social Security Administration has declared this Thursday, March 7, 2024 Slam the Scam Day!

On National Slam the Scam Day and throughout the year, the SSA provides tools to help seniors and others recognize scams related to Social Security and prevent scammers from stealing both funds and personal information.

Social Security and Paper Doll want you to protect yourself, your loved ones, and people in your community this Slam the Scam Day by educating everyone about government imposter scams. Discuss the issue and let people in your life know they shouldn’t be embarrassed to report if they shared personal information or suffered a financial loss. It’s important to report scams as quickly as possible, both to aid recovery and identify the culprits.

The Social Security Administration encourages us to share their Scam Alert fact sheet to help educate others about how to protect themselves. Report Social Security-related scams to the Social Security Office of the Inspector General (OIG).

If you do encounter scammers in any way related to Social Security, report the scam online with as much information as you have regarding the characteristics of their claims. 

Social Security encourages you to visit www.ssa.gov/scam for more information and follow the SSA OIG accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Those accounts aren’t going to share the newest viral dances or memes, but will keep you informed of the latest nasty tactics. Please consider sharing this post with the #SlamtheScam hashtag on your social media platforms.

OTHER SCAMS TARGETING SENIORS

Scams targeting seniors aren’t limited to those involving Social Security. 

The “Grandma, I’m in Jail!” scam has been prevalent for more than a decade. Your phone rings and you hear a young person’s distraught voice begging for help. The caller, ostensibly your grandchild, has somehow accidentally run afoul of the law and is in jail. “Please send bail money but don’t tell Mom and Dad,” the caller begs, providing a phone number and case number; you call as directed and the faux police officer verifies the case number and takes your money. These scams assume Grandma doesn’t hear your voice often enough to recognize it on the phone.

Help your grandparents not fall for such scams by 1) explaining how they work and 2) calling them more often so that they recognize your voice!

Photo by RepentAndSeekChristJesus on Unsplash

Elders are often the victims of medical scams designed to impersonate legitimate agencies related to Medicare, diabetes supplies, medical equipment, hospice, and more. Romance scams, which prey on lonely people of all ages, but especially tender-hearted seniors, are also on the rise.

The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) is great resource for keeping on top of scams targeting the elderly. Bookmark AARP’s Scams and Fraud page to learn about new schemes as they become known.

KNOW THE SCAMMERS’ TRICKS

Similar to “Grandma, I’m in Jail” is “Dad, I’ve had a car accident!” There’s loud traffic noise (and perhaps sirens) in the background and the faux-distraught caller is saying that they’ve caused an accident and that the police say they need to pay a fine right away. Don’t fall for it.

Remember how I said that government agencies won’t ask for payment in gift cards? Neither will your boss. The Do Me a Favor scam shows up via email or text, when your boss (or maybe the CEO of your company) sends a message asking you to purchase gift cards for a work-related charity promotion, promising to pay you back after he receives them.

Yeah, no. The email or text may look like it’s coming from your work contact, your church leader, or your Facebook friend, but it’s almost certainly not.

Similarly, your friends aren’t going to be at the Paris Olympics and lose their wallets and ask you to send them money via Facebook.

The best way to organize yourself against scams is to stay informed of what scams are popular. When you know what to expect, it’s easier to identify scammers and avoid engaging. 

DON’Ts AND DOs TO KEEP YOURSELF SAFE FROM SCAMMERS

DON’T CLICK — If you receive an email or text with links to your bank or other financial account, go instead to the official website and log in from there. If you don’t know the URL, look it up on the back of your bank or credit card or on your statements. And, as you’ve been told since the dawn of email, do not click on attachments from somebody you don’t know.

DON’T TRUST — The Caller ID may say that the inbound call is coming from your bank or the IRS, but it’s ridiculously easy to “spoof” (that is, fake) the identity of a caller. Consider not answering; scammers rarely leave voicemail.

Don’t assume that the caller having the last four digits of your Social Security number or even all of the digits of your account number is on the up-and-up; there’s just too much of our private information on the dark web. Instead, hang up and call the official number for your financial institution and request to be connected to the fraud department.

DON’T DIVULGE — If a stranger claiming to be from your bank or credit card’s fraud department contacts you, ask for a case number. Do not give out your personal information. Do not give out your PIN.

DON’T SAY YES — Do not answer questions in the affirmative. That is, if they ask, “Is this Jane Smith?” don’t say yes; if you must say something, reply, “What is this regarding?” Your voice could be recorded and cloned for AI-related scams. The less you say, the better.

DON’T RUSH (OR BE RUSHED) — It’s the nature of scammers, like the stereotypical used car salesman, to use the pressure of time to get you act against your best interest. Don’t be fooled into making a decision or taking action quickly. Check with advisors, whether more technologically savvy friends or relatives, your accountant or financial advisor, your attorney, or the police.

DO READ UP — The American Bankers Association has a nifty website called BankersNeverAskThat.com. The site explains what to watch out for in terms of email, text, phone, and payment app scams, and also has a great eight-question quiz where you can walk through the situations (on your own, or as part of coaching with a loved one) to identify whether something is a scam or legitimate.

For reference, I did pretty well, but I dithered on the question regarding payment app alerts; if you’ve only recently begun using apps like Zelle, Venmo, or other peer-to-peer payment services, you might find the example sneaky, too, so read (and share) AARP’s How to Avoid Scams on Zelle, Venmo and Other P2P Apps.

The site offers a goofy “retro” scam-themed video game and a series of lighthearted videos to drive the point home.

DO HAVE FAMILY PASSWORDS — Schools have security that was non-existent when I was a kid; there are lists of who is allowed to pick up little Johnny or Janey from school to ensure not only that there’s no Stranger Danger but that wackadoodle exes and pushy in-laws don’t insert themselves between you and your kids. Modern parenting includes having family passwords so that if someone says, “Hi, your mommy told me to come pick you up from soccer practice today,” even if the child recognizes Mommy’s best friend as Auntie Karen, the kids know to wait for the official password.

This concept should be applied to families at all ages. Have a communication password designed so that if Grandma or Dad or College Kid gets a call purporting to be from one of the others and is in in need of emergency funds, there’s a level of security involved. (But, y’know, if Grandma calls from jail too often, maybe let her think about the consequences of her actions for a little while.)

DO TELL THE AUTHORITIES — No matter how embarrassing it is to have been scammed, it’s important to report suspected and actual scams.

  • Notify your bank, credit card company, brokerage, or other financial institution immediately. If scammers have actually taken your money via credit card, the company should be able to flag the transaction as fraud and reverse it immediately; other financial institutions may also be able to freeze the transaction and save your money. Take screenshots of texts or emails, and don’t delete the original messages in case law enforcement wants to dig more deeply into the source code. 
  • Contact the police, and file a police report. Do not be dissuaded if the police officer seems blasé about the crime.

My credit card company once notified me that someone had used my card number to buy an inordinate amount of mail order men’s underwear and stereo equipment. Algorithms had already flagged the purchases as fraud, but they asked me to file a police report. The police officer who took the report at my workplace could not have looked more bored if I’d asked him to watch paint dry. It doesn’t matter. Report!

  • File reports with applicable state and federal agencies. Whether the case involves the Social Security Administration, Medicare, or other federal crimes, report scams to the applicable agencies. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as well as your state’s bureau of investigation all have fraud departments. Learn more at the FTC’s Reportfraud.ftc.gov and the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at IC3.gov. 

THE FUTURE OF SCAMS

Scams — and scammers — aren’t going away. There will always be scammers who take advantage of anyone more easily duped because they have less information, less experience, and fewer people watching out for them. But, as I alluded to earlier, there are higher tech scams on the horizon.

Artificial intelligence is scary. I bet you’ve heard about deepfakes, video imitations made to sound and look like a real person is saying something they never actually said.  

Voiceprints and voice cloning constitute the audio version of deepfakes. A scammer can record you — or take your teenager’s Instagram or TikTok video — and create a completely new message using words and expressions that were never actually said, and then create an “emergency” where it’s believable that money or your Social Security number or other private information is requested. If your college-age kid still hasn’t memorized his Social Security number, you might be tempted to believe it if “he” calls from a spoofed number that looked like his and says he’s filling out a form at school and needed his (or your) digits. 

Voice cloning is already being used. Scammy deepfake videos could just as easily be to sent via Facetime or text video. Be careful.

FUNNY THINGS (NOT) TO DO TO SCAMMERS

You shouldn’t engage with scammers, so don’t emulate Paper Mommy or her friend in the stories below. Still, it’s fun to imagine retribution against bad guys.

When I was a teen, my mother was visiting a friend, a suburban woman of (shall we say) means. A phone scammer interrupted their visit and was urgently pushing some sort of financial scheme. Mom’s friend told the caller that she was sorry, but he’d have to wait, that her husband busy shoveling the cow s***.

Later, my mother spoke of her friend’s response with a twinkle in her eye. 

Paper Mommy, as longtime readers know, is a hoot. After a friend briefly fell prey to the “Grandma, I’m in jail!” scam (until she learned that her teen grandson was fast asleep in his own bed), Paper Mommy began plotting her revenge on scammers. A few years ago, she called me with delight to report that the day she’d been anticipating had finally arrived.

“Grandma, I need your help!” the voice implored. The scammer had already made a tactical error; much to Paper Mommy‘s chagrin, neither my sister nor I have made her a grandmother. My mom tut-tutted as the scammer wove his tale, offering periodic, “Oh, no, darling! … Oh, you poor thing? … You need me to send you money?”

She kept him on the line for eons, repeatedly leading the evil-doer to believe she was prepared to turn over her credit card number to secure grandson’s release. Oh, she just had to find her purse. Oh, fiddlesticks, where was her wallet? Just when his frustration led him to almost crack and he implored, “Grandma, aren’t you going to help me?” my mom uttered her Oscar-worthy line:

“No, Sweetheart. I never really liked you that much.” Click.

 

#SlamTheScam

Posted in Digital, Financial, Paper Organizing, Scams, Seniors | 18 Comments »

Celebrate the Global Day of Unplugging

Posted on: February 26th, 2024 by Julie Bestry | 14 Comments

From the moment you open your eyes in the morning until you finally nod off at night, do you experience over-stimulation? Do you suffer from over-availability, whether to your boss, colleagues, or clients, or to everyone who wants to talk to you about their political campaigns or your auto warranty?

Even if you’re overly connected with the world via glass screens, do you feel a lack of connection — with your loved ones, nature, or even your inner self?

Have I’ve got a holiday for you! From sundown this Friday, March 1, 2024 until sundown on Saturday, it is the Global Day of Unplugging!

WHAT IS THE GLOBAL DAY OF UNPLUGGING?

The Global Day of Unplugging is an annual campaign to bring attention to the importance of taking a break from 21st-century technology, whether that’s your computer, your cell phone, or your brand new Apple Vision Pro. The goal is to embrace person-to-person connection, the kind where you can see deeply into someone else’s eyes because you’re in the same space at the same time.

It’s not that digital engagement is bad, per se. Zoom meetings and remote work means we reduce our overall carbon footprint from work-related road trips and airline travel. Cell phones (even if people mostly communicate by text) let us know when our friends are running late or if the kids need someone to pick them up. 

But being on-all-the-time keeps us from ever refreshing. When it’s our boss that keeps us connected, that’s toxic, as we’ve discussed previously:

I mean, we could move to France, as covered in the first post above, or to Australia, which has just voted to allow workers to ignore after-hours phone calls and email from their companies. That could help reduce any employer-related tethering to our devices.

But we do this same damage to ourselves! Like a digital pacifier, we reach for our devices when we’re bored or anxious: in line at the grocery store, waiting for a doctor’s appointment, on the other end of the couch from our kids or significant other.

Technology is pushed on us from above and from all sides, but it has the potential to become an addiction that pushes us further away from our loved ones.

Wouldn’t you benefit from a little escape? For one 24-hour period starting on Friday, people from all four corners of the globe (yes, I know globes have no corners), will intentionally walk away from their digital lives and meet IRL (in real life).

WHY UNPLUG?

Let’s look at the dangers of the attention economy, which treats our eyeballs (attention) as a scarce commodity. We can prevent some of the problems by decluttering our digital spaces; other parts require concerted efforts at unplugging.

Distractions

Our computers and devices bring so much digital clutter to our attention. Some of it involves what other people want us to pay attention to, things we may or may not find important. But other distractions we bring on ourselves by clicking our way into deeper and deeper rabbit holes, directing us to an article online or a video on TikTok, but then we stay, enraptured and forget what we were doing.

These distractions take our focus off where we intend it to be. Intention is how we make sure we handle what we prioritize and not someone else’s priorities. Decluttering minimizes those distractions.

When we’re organized in our homes or offices, the clutter and inefficient systems make it hard to find what we want when we want it. Digital clutter is more insidious because we don’t even realize that we’re being distracted — we’ve become so used to it, and because nobody else sees our digital clutter they don’t call attention to it.

When we eliminate digital excess and distractions and create new, more efficient pathways, we feel calmer and more in control. When that happens, we’re in the zone, better able to do deep work and get into flow, with less wasted time searching for whatever we want — or what our boss or client wants.

However, of all the ways digital addiction hurts us, perhaps the distractions and lack of productivity are the least important.

Physical Health

Digital overuse is bad for our physical health. We develop bad posture from shlumping at our desks, gripping our phones, and hyperextending our necks.

Tech Neck is an informal term for the medical condition we experience when we use our devices. We flex our necks and shoulders, causing strain strain on the muscles and joints; the more we do it, the greater the build-up of tension, leading to muscle pain and headaches. Some research even suggests that overusing mobile devices can cause bone spurs to form at the nexus between the neck and head!

Additionally, exposure to the blue light emitted by phones, tablets, and computer screens can cause insomnia and decrease the quality of our sleep, which can further impact our ability to focus. Of course, when our attention span is decreased (whether due to sleepless nights or being trained to think in tweet-length chunks of language), it takes ever more effort to interpret complex material or be creative.

And, of course, repeated digital interruptions from our devices leads to higher rates of exhaustion and stress-induced ailments. 

Stress

Speaking of stress, staying plugged in messes up our psyches in multiple ways:

  • Information overload leads to overwhelm — To borrow a movie title, it can seem like we’re dealing with everything everywhere all at once. Your work, your children’s homework portal, national disasters, politics — it’s all so important.

The problem with everything seeming like a priority is that eventually nothing is a priority. All issues, large and small, compete on a stage the size of the planet, the form of your smartphone, and the synapses in your brain simultaneously.

The problem with everything seeming like a priority is that eventually nothing is a priority. All issues, large and small, compete on a stage the size of the planet, the form of your smartphone, and the synapses in your brain… Share on X
  • Overwhelm leads to increased anxiety — Think about the last time you were trying to juggle multiple problems at the same time. I bet you were trying to give your attention to so many interested parties that one last, small request (“Honey, where’s the Costco card?” “Mom, can you take me to the mall?”) made you feel like your limbs where going to fly off in different directions.
  • Use of social media leads to a variety of emotional dysfunctions. Over the last decade, social media use has grown; in 2022, the average person spent 2 hours and 27 minutes on social media per day. Why is that worrying? 
    • The more we connect online, the more we experience FOMO (fear of missing out).
    • We more see other people having fun (attending parties, going on vacation, celebrating life milestones), the more likely we are to feel lonely.
    • Comparing one’s own life to other’s highlight reels can lead to lower levels of self-esteem. If you judge your own self-worth by comparing yourself to others, social media may make you feel like you’re failing.
    • As people — particularly younger folks — spend less time developing in-person social interactions and more time on social media and dating apps, there’s an increase in social awkwardness when they finally do meet face-to-face. This contributes to more social anxiety. Additionally, the social relationships we do have tend to fray without positive, in-person interactions.
    • Social media makes it easier for people to exhibit bad behavior. Bullied teenagers used to have a respite from their cruel classmates once the school day was over; now, it follows them home on their phones and social gaming sites. And we all know about rude online treatment of anyone who dares to have a differing opinion on anything, whether politics, sports, or music, or has a different religious, national, ethnic, or other kind of identity.
    • More nuanced unkindness online occurs in the withholding of likes or social approval, which again, when we compare our “performance” and “appeal” to that of others, can make us feel like we’re lacking.
    • All of this can lead to depression.
  • We can lose the ability to ability to self-soothe when we’re constantly tethered to our digital pacifiers. On the plus side, our devices can distract us from very real things that, well, suck. But when we become dependent on that kind of distraction, our former life skills dissolve. We used to be able to make polite conversation with strangers in line or read books for extended periods of time. We could go to sleep without an hour of scrolling. Now, we’re often unable to tame our thoughts unless we allow the internet to do it.

WHY IS IT SO HARD TO UNPLUG?

Every app and the whole on the internet is purposely designed to keep you coming back. 

There’s a scientific explanation. Every time we use our devices, it reinforces the pathways taken by dopamine, a happy-making neurotransmitter at the base of our reward-seeking behaviors. Just like the bells and blinking lights on a Vegas slot machine condition us to pull the lever or push the buttons one more time, the notifications, “Breaking News” headlines, daily streaks in apps, and aforementioned “likes” draw us back in.

Godfather Goodfellas GIF from Godfather GIFs

Worse, as with other addictions, when this neurotransmitter pathway doesn’t get reinforced, we actually experience something very similar to a chemical withdrawal. Have you ever found yourself without your phone, feeling jittery and unable to tame your mood?

It’s not your fault. You have to use modern devices for work, and you really do want to have access for many of life’s convenience. But you will feel better if you can lessen your dependence.

HOW TO UNPLUG FOR A DAY

To celebrate the Global Day of Unplugging, you can look for a community event near you. There’s everything from a musical chairs event in Charleston to Yoga and Sound Healing in Gainesville, from a Family Bonfire & S’Mores in Star, Idaho to something called a Disco Get Down-Dog in San Diego. And this truly is global, with events from Denmark to Bolivia, Virginia to Switzerland!

The Global Day of Unplugging organization has listed over 200 ideas of what you can do instead of being plugged in!

The idea isn’t to become a Luddite, but to find ways to feel less isolated or disconnected (whether from others or yourself). Ideas range from the tame (unclutter your pantry, take a hike, do some gardening) to those that indulge your inner child (build a living room fort, blow bubbles, put on a puppet show).

Create art (decorate a lantern, have fun with origami) or go on a quest (create a scavenger hunt or go on a Gnome hunt)! And while I’d be hopeless at crocheting for a cause or going on an ice-block slip & slide, all of these events would definitely be healthier for my brain, heart, and soul than scrolling through the curated slime-fest some platforms have become.

You can also support the global unplugging movement by making a donation or purchasing “merch,” but even joining at the free plan lets you download their “I/We Unplug” signs.

If you enjoy the Global Day of Unplugging, consider taking a tech sabbath as described by Tiffany Shlain in 24/6: Giving up Screens One Day a Week to Get More Time, Creativity, and Connection or doing a digital detox on a more regular basis, so you and your devices take a real break from one another.

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TRY BABY STEPS TO GET MORE COMFORTABLE WITH UNPLUGGING

Nobody is saying that you have to become an in-person social diva overnight and join with others. If you’re more the “lone wolf” type, there are many ways to make it easier to unplug.

  • Make it less convenient to access your phone when you should be doing something else. At work, put it in a drawer; if you work from home, take it to another room. When out and about, put your phone in your purse or work bag, inside a zippered compartment. Add friction!
  • If you can’t keep your hands off your phone, use the accessibility functions to turn your phone to “grayscale.” When the display is limited to black, white, and grey, your brain gets fewer dopamine hits and you’ll be less compelled to reach for it.
  • Use positive reinforcement. Doodle a message (like “UNPLUG!” or “Put me down!”) to yourself and take a photo (or create a graphic in Canva) that reinforces your goal on your locks screen. 
  • Silence notifications when you need to do focused deep work (but set expectations so co-workers or family trust you’ll get back to them).
  • Don’t use your devices in the bedroom, at night or in the morning. Remember, the blue light from devices detracts from your ability to get recuperative sleep (meaning you’ll be distracted the next day), and using them first thing in the morning keeps you from starting your day focused and intentional. Don’t get sucked in to what’s trending.
  • Don’t text and drive. Don’t dictate and drive. Don’t let your phone read texts aloud. Unless you’re getting directions or there’s an emergency, put your phone away.

And if you’re worried about your family, remember: it’s hard to limit screen time for kids and teens when you don’t model healthy digital hygiene yourself. Work together to support alternatives to an always-online life.

Ironically, the more technology gains a pernicious hold on our attention, the more we may need to consider technological solutions to untether. 

For example, there’s an increase in apps to make it easier to not use apps! ClearSpace claims that 97% of its users reduced their screen time in the first week of use. It uses a minimalist design to block and limit distracting apps, reduce time spent doom scrolling, train attention through screen time challenges, and provide screen time accountability and reporting.

Similar apps for helping reduce screen use include Forest, Space, Off the Grid, and Elqi.

There’s even a new phone, the Minimal Phone, designed to make essential work easier but social media use less appealing.

The Minimal Phone uses an E-Ink display that’s supposed to reduce eye-strain and promote healthy sleep. The claim is that it’s “designed to discourage prolonged social media use, while still being perfect for essential tasks like emails and texts.” It’s higher tech than a flip phone, but less inviting than a typical smart phone.

UNPLUG TO ACHIEVE SILENCE

We tend to think of unplugging as it affects our eyes, but our ears get overstimulated, too.

The Sounds of Silence

Even 65 years ago, individuals were trying to unplug from the experience of audio overload, as The Restorative Pause of Silent Record Week and the below video both explain.

(Learn more about the phenomenon of “silent” records in Spin Magazine’s Silence is Golden and Music Weird’s The Sounds of Silence: A Brief History of Silent Recordings.) 

A study entitled Is silence golden? Effects of auditory stimuli and their absence on adult hippocampal neurogenesis, published in 2013 in the journal Brain Structure and Function found that, for mice at least, silence can be “a proactive catalyst for neurogenesis.” In other words, silence can stimulate the creation of new brain cells. Stepping away from the pings and buzzes might not just make you calmer, but smarter!

And it’s not just the one-way silence that might benefit us. Last year, researchers found a problematic aspect of video conferencing. When we chat in person, we respond to yes-or-no questions, on average, within 297 milliseconds; on Zoom, it’s 976 milliseconds! We may not perceive the delay, but the slowdown interferes with the neural mechanisms regulate human conversation? Our physiological response? (Zoom) fatigue. 

And one study found that two minutes of silence interspersed with, or after, relaxing music increased the calming power of music on cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory systems. Silence combats the negative aspects of our online life.

You may find these trends toward silence intriguing enough to consider other ways you might unplug.

Silent Reading Groups

Silent Book Club has over 500 chapters in 50 countries. There’s no assigned reading, and you can meet, eat and drink, and read silently for an hour along with others equally craving silence. (They do socialize after the reading time.)

Carving Silence from Chaos

Earth FM offers a search engine to find the quietest places in the word’s loudest cities. Unplug from your devices, then escape the high decibels of your city and enter peaceful gardens, parks, pools, and arboretums.

Los Angeles Ornamental Japanese Garden, photo by Glen Bowman (CC 2.0)

Silent Salons

In many beauty salons, you can request a silent appointment or silent chair. It might seem contradictory to the idea of unplugging from the digital realm to have more one-to-one interactions. But sometimes, a person is overwhelmed by all auditory experiences. It’s OK to unplug from conversation, too.

Silent Travel

Unplugging is hard. Most of us would feel accomplished enough if we could put our phones away for an entire day. Given that, I’m fascinated by a new trend of traveling unplugged.

Silent travel is designed to be restorative and mindful, so when you return, you don’t need a vacation to recover from your vacation. Options include:

  • Silent meditation retreats — Monks and nuns may be the best-known practitioners of silent meditation, but interest grows every year. A colleague has attended multiple silent retreats over the years, each scheduled in proximity to her birthday. The experience gives her the opportunity to focus on her thoughts and feelings, and do some self-analysis, things that would be very difficult amid the FOMO and constant contact inherent in carrying the internet around in her pocket.
  • Quiet and silent nature reserves — Nature is not silent (though I wish the tree frogs outside my suburban home would considering hushing themselves.) Animals are, however, unlikely to buzz or ping or otherwise carry on a loud one-side conversation with a fellow creature halfway across the country. Organizations like Quiet Parks International promote awareness of listening to nature and our inner voices, reduce the impact of noise pollution, and foster the benefits of experiences that allow for embracing silence and the sounds of nature.

For those of us who struggle with traditional meditation, especially the kinds that require sitting still, silent walking sans devices are an anxiety-busting revelation. Several organizations support such efforts by identifying locations and providing advice, including SilentWalks.org, Sharing Nature, and Ideas for Educating. 

  • Sleep tourism has become a whole thing in recent years, with the hospitality industry investing deeply in wellness options like specialized in-bed therapies, guided meditations, in-room essential oil infusers, and other treats. Sleep retreats offer options to modify sounds, aromas, temperatures, textures, surfaces, and experiences.

Bed in the Clouds Photo by Mo Eid

Escaping the negative effects of your phone is just the beginning; even the most middlebrow of hotel stays now include combination alarm clocks and sound machines so that your business trip dreams can be accompanied by the sounds of rushing water or birdsong.

If you’re a light sleeper, quiet hotels help unplug from other people’s conversations and devices. Quiet Hotels and QuietHotelRooms can help you find quiet spaces is noisy cities.

As you unplug from the digital world and sensory inputs, consider silent options.

READ MORE ABOUT UNPLUGGING

Attention and Mental Health (Center for Humane Technology)

Safe Technology North Carolina 

Unpluggo — Disconnect to Reconnect 

Why Unplugging Matters 

Posted in Digital, Paper Organizing, Productivity, Psychological | 14 Comments »

Blending Libraries: How To Organize Books with Your Sweetheart

Posted on: February 12th, 2024 by Julie Bestry | 18 Comments

Did you know that in addition to February 14th being Valentine’s Day, it’s also International Book Giving Day and Library Lovers’ Day? As someone who’d much rather receive a bouquet of books than flowers, this makes sense to Paper Doll. And February 20th is Clean Out Your Bookcase Day!

The literary and the romantic will always be tied together. I mean, watching or hearing someone declare their love is nice, but being able to read (and reread) the declaration more than two hundred years later? Jane Austen knew what she was doing when she had Persuasion‘s Captain Wentworth’s write this to Anne Elliot. 

I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant…

N/A

Reading can be romantic. But let’s face it, there’s nothing romantic about organizing books.

Or is there?

What could be more romantic than your sweetheart making sure you don’t fall and break your neck tripping over their pile of unread books? What could be a finer proof of your love than moving your books off of the kitchen counter so your darling can actually make lunch?

Other than commingling finances, what could require more love and trust than combining your personal libraries?

ORGANIZE YOUR PERSONAL LIBRARY FIRST

Organizing, downsizing, and protecting your personal library (and your reading time) involves a great deal of thought and planning, as I’ve written before in various posts over 17 years, including:

Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it. For example, you could read what Martha Stewart and her favorite peeps have to say about How to Organize Books in a Way That Works for You. 

Conversely, you could review what the Washington Post says in How to Organize Your Books, According to People with Thousands of Them. 

And, of course, even though I’m a professional organizer, I’m a reader first, and I know that there’s much more to a personal library that just arranging books. To that end, I invite everyone to read Freya Howarth’s How to Nurture a Personal Library.

If your own book collection is sprawling, full of duplicates and titles you’ll never read again (or read at all), outdated college textbooks, or other book clutter (did you gasp at “book clutter”?), you can find ways to hide your biblio-addiction in your own, private space.

That works for hermits. However you choose to organize your own books, organizing books when you live with your significant other adds multiple layers of complexity.

WHAT TO CONSIDER WHEN BLENDING PERSONAL LIBRARIES

First, you have to decide whether you’re going to try to blend your books, or keep them separate. Then you have to embrace the difficult work of culling your collections. (If you came to blows trying to figure out whose air fryer or toaster oven you’d use, that was mere child’s play.)

When friends ask me if they should blend book collections with their sweethearts, I say, “Don’t. Books are intimate. Mixing your books is like mixing your toothbrushes. Blech!”

When clients ask me the same question, I am more sanguine, or at least more practical.

When friends ask me if they should blend book collections with their sweethearts, I say, 'Don't. Books are intimate. Mixing your books is like mixing your toothbrushes. Blech!' When clients ask me the same question, I am more… Share on X

Space Invaders — Introducing One Library to Another

We love our book collections. Our personal libraries say something about who we were, are, and hope to be. Exposing our private collections may be awkward or embarrassing, less like when your parents share “baby on the bearskin rug” photos and more like when they show photos of you, all braces-and-bad-perm, at the junior prom.

So, let’s imagine that you and your beloved have just decided to cohabit.

  • Are they moving into your space?

How will you keep from feeling like your terrain is being invaded? If you’ve previously shared an apartment with a friend or just a sub-letting housemate, it’s probably been very clear whose space belongs to whom. Perhaps the division was congenial and you easily divided everything equally; perhaps not.

Will you resent reducing the space available for your carefully curated collection?

It’s one thing to give up space in your closet, bathroom cabinet, or even your underwear drawer, but if you guard your bookshelves fiercely (as most avid readers do), how will you welcome your sweetheart and fellow reader into your space?

  • Are you moving into their space?

Any time two people move in together where one has already been residing, there’s an implicit turf war. How will you feel at home in a home without adequate and fairly representative space for your books, which you may love as much as someone else loves their Labradoodle! You don’t want to feel like an invader, but neither do you want to feel like a guest in what should become your new home.

Divide Without Conquering — How to Share a Space When Both of You Have Custody of Books

Maybe you’re moving together to a new home and get to start fresh. Or, it’s possible you’ve been living together for a while. Whether the two of your are married or otherwise, your home has the potential for a “yours, mine, and ours” problem in the book department.

Separate but Equal, or Joint Custody?

Even couples who enjoy a hot romance may prefer a cool detente when it comes to blending books. You might decide to keep your personal collections completely separate, or only blend books related to your mutual interests or things related to the family as a whole.

If you decide not to mix your collections, you’ll need to at least designate space for who gets which bookcases and shelves. But this leaves questions:

  • How do you achieve fairness?  

Do you opt for parity?

Your instinct may be to just start unboxing your books wherever you’ve identified as a good space for you, like how the first college student to arrive picks the bed and gets the nearest shelf. That’s fine in a dorm room, where each item has its mirror image, but whose apartment or house has truly equal (and equally appealing) space?

If you decide to choose parity, is the solution equal shelf space or equal number of books? What if one person has hundreds of thin volumes of cozy mysteries but another has far fewer titles but they’re all thick and leather-bound?

You may scoff, but I’ve seen married couples who otherwise seem sane and satisfied in their love come to verbal blows over one having more books taking over their joint space. Leaving aside that all but the mildest scuffles might be better suited to the marriage counseling couch than the organizing session, it’s better to anticipate the problem and talk out the solutions.

If you do blend your collections, either partially or in total (notwithstanding your bedside table To Be Read piles), you’re still going to have a lot to consider.

  • How do you deal with duplicates?

First, there’s the issue of when the two partners own the same book. In the name of organization, Sweetie may want to keep the pristine first edition of The Sun Also Rises, but Darling has a bent copy with every margin filled with the wisdom gleaned from a much-loved college literature course (when Darling went through a beret-and-Gauloises-smoking phase).

Typically, when professional organizers work with clients who have duplicate skirts or screwdrivers or spatulas, we focus on what’s in the best condition. However, weighing the value of something that is “the same but different,” like a book that has financial value vs. one that has sentimental or intellectual value, is more difficult.

Before shelving, Sweetie and Darling need to decide how they’ll move forward. Will they purge based on monetary value or let sentiment win?

As Emily Dickinson said, the heart wants what the heart wants. If one partner pushes to purge by discounting sentiment, what will the other partner’s heart want if forced to give up too much?

This doesn’t even take into account when one member of the couple has what the other considers an excessive number of duplicates all on their own. Maybe Sweetums has a copy their first sweetheart gave them, then a refined leatherette copy, and maybe even a 50th anniversary edition? Whether it’s Stephen King or F. Scott Fitzgerald, you’ll have to come to terms regarding how much one “gets” to keep.

  • What organizing system will you use?

Will you shelve randomly, just getting everything out of boxes and onto your bookshelves, figuring you can always organize them later — or perhaps one of you doesn’t care about organizing them at all? (Yes, that was Paper Doll you just heard go, “eek!”)

Will you be systematic, perhaps by author or title or genre? Is it enough for you to separate your fiction from your non-fiction? Or must fiction be chunked into historical eras and then by author, with non-fiction classified by Dewey and his (sexist, racist) decimal system or Library of Congress? 

What if you want to organize by genre and your Honeybunny painstakingly orders (and reorders) books in the order HB intends to read them? Readers have quirky preferences. In Anne Fadiman’s famous essay Marrying Libraries (linked below) she proposed to organize American authors alphabetically by last name, but put British authors chronologically, and then their works chronologically by their publishing date! 

How to organize books is hotly contested. A You.gov survey a few months ago asked more than 29,000 Americans how many books they owned and how they organized them. The results shows a variety of preferences; what’s the chance your Romeo or Juliet organizes books exactly as you do?

(I’d like to refrain from judgement, but — have you met me? I understand the 28% who don’t organize their books, but the 5% who don’t have books? Please, dear readers. Don’t fall in love with serial killers or people who don’t have books.)

  • What role should aesthetics play, particularly with books in public spaces (like the living room or den)?

Should crumbling (but well-loved) books go on the home’s fanciest library shelves? What if one person wants to organize by color, while the other is nauseated by anything too removed from the Dewey Decimal System?

If you share a library with someone who organizes books by whether the cover is red or purple, will you start re-thinking your commitment to the relationship?

What about rules for home library organizing? If you (like Paper Doll) are the type to bring all books up to the edge of the shelf, how will you share your library with someone who pushes books all the way back of the shelf so that the fronts aren’t smooth and picture frames and knickknacks get piled in front of them, or worse, overflow books get double-layered in front of the books in the back and … OMG, I’m hyperventilating!

  • What about the inherent public-facing messages related to content?

What if your partner is embarrassed by your middlebrow tastes? (Maybe they shouldn’t be such a snob about your collection!)

Perhaps you’re cringing at the political leanings reflected by your partner’s books? (You might start wondering if you shouldn’t be with someone whose politics give you “the ick.”) 

  • How will you organize the finances of growing your mutual libraries? 

This is part of a larger discussion in your household. If you’re “just” cohabiting, then you may each buy whatever books you want with your own money. But if you’re married, this is a whole other marriage counselor/financial advisor/professional organizer triple-threat conversation. Will you have “yours, mine, and ours” bank accounts and purchase books accordingly from those accounts?

What about digital purchases going forward? Having one unified Kindle account can be a mess, not only for organizing your digital libraries, but for dealing with ownership if the relationship sours. 

The Ugly Truth

The sad truth is that not all relationships last. The Gotye song Somebody I Used to Know is heartbreaking and universal, especially when he says,

No, you didn’t have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number

Nobody wants to think about the end of a relationship — of pre-nups and post-nups and dividing community property. But other than personal photos (and the alluded-to music libraries), what could be harder to disentangle than a couple’s library of books?

  • How will you de-blend your book collections in case of a breakup or divorce?

In the mid-1990s, I lent my (now-former) boyfriend my copy of Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy. 

N/A

The end of the relationship stung. Time heals, but I still seethe over the loss of the book.  

Which is more misery-inducing? Haggling over whose signed copy of To Kill a Mockingbird this is, or playing keep-away and refusing to take ownership of The DaVinci Code or Atlas Shrugged or Eat, Pray, Love?

If you do blend your libraries, perhaps take the precaution of putting your initials on the inside cover of your books. Maybe that little insurance policy that you won’t lose your books will give you the confidence to keep working together through the tough times?

BLENDING BOOKS: THE ONGOING DEBATE

This post was supposed to be about love, and now I’ve shared all the troubles I’ve seen in my professional (and personal) capacity. Maybe you’d like someone else’s take?

This 2018 piece from Minnesota’s Star Tribune, Bookmark: Should newlyweds combine their book collections?, offers a sweetly messy take.

The truth is, though, there’s no one right answer. Even the popular blog Book Riot can’t agree. In 2012, Book Riot published How to Say “I Do” to Shared Bookshelves Without Ruining Your Relationship; nine years later, it published, Don’t Merge Book Collections.

The thing is, they were both right.

The earlier, more optimistic post focused on the how-to advice: work together to create a new, joint organizing system; display your books so you and your partner can operate from a position of strength and wisdom; “Leave your Judgy McJudgerton pants in the closet” (which is quite possibly my favorite piece of organizing advice, ever); and compromise. The author, Book Riot’s Chief of Staff Rebecca Joines Schinsky, acknowledged that if things got hot (and not the good kind) over the discussions, you might just decide to blend everything except books.

But Schinsky ends with, “Like committing to a relationship, merging your bookshelves is an exercise in hope.” She eschews the idea of an exit strategy. 

A different Book Riot author, Associate Editor Danika Ellis, was less optimistic in 2021, giving four reasons not to blend books: personal libraries are a reflection of our unique, personal selves; our sorting systems are similarly personal; our systems should work for us; and, as I’ve already noted, relationships end. More cynical than her colleague, Ellis ends with:

Your books will outlive you, and they’ll certainly outlive your relationship, no matter how charmed. So make the right call: prioritize your books. You’ll thank me later.

ORGANIZE BOOKS (WITH YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER) WITHOUT BLOODSHED

Romantic or cynic, you can’t keep the books in moving boxes piled up around you. (Well, as I’ve seen with many clients over the years, you can, but I don’t advise it.)

A few years ago I wrote Paper Doll’s Pop Culture Guide to Decluttering with Your Valentine. It reflected my definitive approach to organizing with the love of your life. Before you think about organizing your mutual libraries, read that. (But I’ll now always look at my comment, “Purge the judgement and toss the guilt,” and wish I’d written, “Judgy McJudgerton pants.”) 

Beyond that, communication is key. You may have a history of long, romantic discussions over favorite books, authors, and genres, but have you ever talked about organization? Go through the issues I raised above: about resentment over invasion or not feeling at home, about parity and systems, about aesthetics vs. function, about finances. And yes, about how to have an insurance policy so the books don’t suffer if the relationship doesn’t make it.

Compromise is hard. I advise creating a system that requires as little compromise as possible. The best relationships are the ones where you are able to maintain a sense of your personal identity as you grow a mutual identity in a couple. You will face enough compromises in other areas of your relationship; do what you can to keep your relationship from impinging on your reading comfort.

Pare down your individual book collections, and then start with them separate —  your shelves and their shelves. You can always create shelves with books for family-specific topics like travel, cookbooks, or household care, and if you grow your family, books for any tiny humans who come along.

That said, be open to reversible experimentation. Getting rid of out-of-print books is hard to reverse, while a new organizing system causing confusion is easily remedied.

Look for helpful alternatives. If you’re both willing to blend libraries but not willing to cull duplicates, consider putting them on a bookshelf in your guest bedroom. Your guests can easily find something to read on sleepless nights. 

Create a library inventory. There are so many apps and online options, like Libib, Goodreads, Library Thing, for documenting what books you own and where you’ve organized them. Just scan your books’ bar codes and the information will populate in a database. Most let you create a field for who brought it into the household (a high-tech version of penciling your initials inside the cover). It will also help you identify duplicates if your collections are large and sprawl across rooms or even floors of the house.

LOVING ESSAYS ABOUT BLENDING LIBRARIES

No Valentine’s Week post on the romantic blending of libraries would be complete without sharing two seminal essays on the topic:

Marrying Libraries by Anne Fadiman, excerpted from her excellent book, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader. (My favorite essay in the collection is My Odd Shelf, but the whole book is a reader’s paradise.)

N/A

The Books by Alexander Chee for The Morning News with this: 

It’s hard to explain how moving it was to me to sit down with Dustin’s books on the night I combined our fiction. It took me completely by surprise. I had truly thought it was an ordinary exercise. But it never is with books, I know now.

I began by carefully lifting them off the shelf, dusting them and taking them into the living room.

In some way that wasn’t apparent to me before they sat on the side table, waiting to be sorted, I could see these were the books that had kept him company in those years before he knew me, the books that had helped him turn into him. This hadn’t quite been apparent to me before I took them down to move them.

but also this bit about duplicates, which sums up the whole discussion:

You don’t keep the doubles because you believe you may not stay together. You keep the doubles because the one you own, that’s your friend. The one he owns, that’s his. To only have one, it would be like sharing an email address.

Not everything can be shared. And that isn’t a crisis. It’s how it should be.

If you share your home with a sweetie-pie, how do you organize your mutual book collections?

Posted in Books and Reading, Paper Organizing, Psychological, Reading | 18 Comments »

Reference Files Master Class (Part 4) — Household and Personal Papers

Posted on: February 5th, 2024 by Julie Bestry | 16 Comments

As part of our 2024 refresh of classic posts and essential concepts in paper organizing, we’ve already looked at the what it’s time to let go of, the basic tools for creating a working filing system, and the first three categories of my approach to a personal or family filing system.

In today’s post, we look at the last two elements of the system.

  • Financial
  • Legal
  • Medical
  • Household
  • Personal

With each of these categories, there are times when a paper, digital, or hybrid approach is the optimal solution.

For financial documents, I encouraged establishing a baseline paper system for building skills in financial management; digital storage is a fine adjunct to that once you have a handle on your money and the related activities. For legal papers, digital storage provides a solid backup, but for your most vital documents, you will need to access the originals. 

Last week as we saw with medical documents, paper and digital complement each other, depending on where you need to access the information as well as an individual’s adeptness with apps and software.

Those first three are the most “official” types of documents. If you don’t have access to financial or legal information, it can cause troubles with your credit history or the IRS, lead to you losing property, or even land you in jail. The consequences of not having medical information can range from inconvenient to life-threatening.

Happily, our final two categories are less fraught. Maintaining household papers helps you save money, reduce friction when seeking solutions, and provide quick answers. Meanwhile, an orderly system for personal papers helps generated a biographical history of you and your family members and develop a repository of personal research. Done well, you can avoid piles of random papers.

HOUSEHOLD FILES

You may be pretty proud of how you’ve managed your financials, but if you’re like most people, your household papers are strewn across a series of drawers, a cabinet in the kitchen, or an unlabeled hanging folder.

I get it. It’s probably easier for you to envision when and how you’d need financial — and maybe legal and medical — information. But household papers, while straightforward, can be wide-ranging, and shouldn’t be the paperwork equivalent of a junk drawer.

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home, and while your home-related papers don’t often shout for attention, they need love.

House drawing created with Microsoft Bing Image Creator

Household Inventory

Both reasons to keep a household inventory require anticipating unpleasantness, so it’s no wonder people avoid the task. 

If your house was the victim of a 100-year flood or if robbers made off with your possessions like thieves in the night (or, the way my car was stolen, in broad daylight!), would you be able to itemize your losses to the insurance company? Unless you live as modestly as a monk, you probably need a household inventory, something that identifies all the non-trivial items in the home and their value.

Unless you live as modestly as a monk, you probably need a household inventory, something that identifies all the non-trivial items in the home and their value. Share on X

The other situation is no less vexing. When a marriage dissolves, the proceedings require both members of the couple creating a marital asset list. This involves not only financial assets like bank and retirement accounts (as well as liabilities, like debts and mortgages), but also tangible assets, like your Grandma’s couch, his replica of the Stanley Cup (not these Stanley cups), and the antique table you bought together.

While a marital asset list requires more complexity than a standard inventory (specifying how it came how it was acquired, whether prior to the marriage, as a gift or bequest, or as jointly-purchased property), it builds on the information in the version for insurance purposes.

Home Inventory Basics

While a future post will review the finer points of creating a household inventory, there are some basic steps to follow.

  • Pair up with your spouse, friend, or a professional organizer so that one person is moving clockwise around the room, not skipping anything, while the other transcribes the information.
  • Consider furniture, wall hangings and free-standing decor, electronics, china, silver, crystal, jewelry, clothing, books, music, and personal effects. Note large furniture/items first, then deal with visible decor, then possessions inside of cabinets and drawers.
  • Log a possession’s name or description; brand name, artist, or designer, its place of origin or how you came to own it, the general date of acquisition/purchase, and the price you paid. (To start, just log what you have; the rest can be filled in later.) Note where in the house the item is regularly kept.
  • Go room-by-room, identifying and logging possessions. 

The fastest method is to type it into a spreadsheet like Excel or Google sheets; if you hunt and peck, and can’t type faster than you handwrite, then designate your inventory partner to be the scribe while you circumnavigate the room.

Create a digital inventory file in the computer (backed up to the cloud), but print a copy for your paper files. (Most clients like to keep a copy of their printed home inventory at the front of their Household files section. You may want to put an additional copy behind your homeowner’s or renter’s insurance policy, in the Financial files.) When you sell or acquire something new, or replace a broken or outmoded item, mark it on the paper copy and just update the digital copy periodically. 

An auxiliary photographic inventory can support your written one. This can range from something as simple as taking photos from a few different angles in your studio apartment and saving them to an “inventory” album in your phone’s photo app to doing a methodical photographic inventory of every piece of art, furniture, and fine jewelry.

The effort you expend should be proportional to the value of your possessions; nobody needs a photo of your curling iron or your wobbly thrift-store shoe rack.

If you decide to keep a combined written and photographic inventory, look at a spreadsheet/database hybrid like Airtable, which is free for up to 1 GB of attachments per base, and 1000 records per base. 

There are also apps to make inventorying your space easier, including Encircle, Sortly, Memento Database, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ home inventory app, and more. We’ll discuss these in great detail in a future post.

Beyond the household

Your household inventory extends beyond your physical home. Remember to log your other spaces, such as:

  • Backyard sheds or storage pods
  • College dorm rooms (and summer storage if they don’t bring everything home)
  • College students’ off-campus apartments
  • Off-site storage units (in town, and any you maintain in other cities)
  • Anything on your boat (or, if you’re a fancy-pants type, your jet)
  • Time-shares
  • AirB&B/Venmo properties, second homes, holiday cottages, and other real estate

After you complete your inventories — and it will probably take many sessions to gather all of the information needed — don’t forget to confer with your insurance agent to make sure you’re covered for the replacement value if you suffered losses. You may need to increase overall coverage or add insurance riders for individual pieces.

Home Maintenance Records

Whatever you do to your house likely would benefit from you capturing information about your house. Home maintenance records include:

  • Seasonal household maintenance schedule
  • Contact list of all the household helpers you use, from cleaners and plumbers to the people who clear your gutters, repair your roof, sweep your chimney.
  • Service provider folders — If you have regularly scheduled services, whether indoors, like for pest removal, or outdoors, like lawn care or snow plowing, keep a folder for each company. 
  • List/description of your home’s light bulbs for under-cabinets, in-ceiling lights, and garage and/or outdoor lights. Don’t count on memory to know what base and light type goes where. (This is a lovely parting gift to pass along to anyone who buys your home!)
  • Battery record — Keep a running list of what battery sizes everything in your home needs. Remotes take AA and AAA; toys and gadgets require C, D, and 9-volt; cordless phones use 2.4-volt batteries; personal medical equipment (like diabetes glucose meters) use flat button-style batters, like 2032s. Each time you buy something that requires batteries, log the battery size here. 
  • Family emergency plans and escape routes — Check Paper Doll Organizes You To Prepare for an Emergency for ideas on what to track.
  • Fusebox/Circuit Breaker map — Over time, the labels on your fusebox start to fade. While you should refresh the writing, it’s helpful to have a chart or map to make sure you know what maps to what.
  • Trouble-shooting notes — When your toilet glugs or your sump pump whistles or something goes awry, write down what the experts tell you to do so you’ll prepared the next time!

Depending on the size and nature of your home, this section might require multiple interior file folders in a few hanging folders, or you might prefer to create a 3-ring binder with sections for each for easy access by a babysitter or house sitter. 

Auto Maintenance Records

Even if you only ever use one mechanic shop and they keep computerized records of all maintenance to your car, storing accurate records helps you financially.

Toy Car Photo by Atish Sewmangel on Unsplash

If your car’s manufacturer issues a recall or technical service bulletin, searchable at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, you may be able to recoup money you’ve already paid for repairs. Additionally, if you sell your car privately, prospective owners are more inclined to buy cars with a diligently maintained service history. Maintain:

  • Service records — Every time you get an oil change or have a repair done, you should receive a printout of what work was done, on what date, at what mileage. Whether repairs are to the engine or the body work, be sure to request documentation.
  • Purchases — Keep records of all purchases for your car, such as tires, batteries and windshield wipers. 
  • Size list — Unless you naturally remember what size tires or windshield wipers your car needs, writing this down somewhere will make life easier when you’re shopping. 
  • Mileage records — While not essential, if you do maintain mileage records for purposes other than tax deductions (like monitoring your gas efficiency), keep these here.

Don’t just crumple these papers in your glove compartment! Use interior folders for each category in one auto maintenance hanging folders. You may also want to keep a binder with copies of major purchase records (tires, engine parts, batteries, etc.) in your glove compartment or under the seat in case you need to replace an item under warranty while traveling.

Manuals for Assembly, Installation, Maintenance, and Repair

Do you speak Spanish and Japanese? Do you speak them fluently enough to reprogram your DVR or follow instructions for setting up your Wi-Fi network? If you aren’t fluent in the language in which the manual is written, say domo arigato for the service it has provided and arrivederci before recycling it!

If you don’t still own the thing, you don’t need the manual! If you give donate to charity or sell it in a yard sale, provide the instruction manual; if you throw the item away, toss the manual!

Households have a lot of appliances and random stuff. You may have manuals for:

  • Major appliances like your furnace, refrigerator, washer/dryer, etc. 
  • Small kitchen, household, and personal appliances for blenders and toasters, humidifiers or vacuums, or hair dryers — Once you’ve owned the item a month or so, do you really need the instructions? If you can’t make toast, perhaps organizing shouldn’t be super-high on your priorities right now.
  • Electronics, including audiovisual/entertainment devices, computer hardware, and software 
  • Toys and gadgets
  • Furniture — If the manual tells you how to put something together or install it and you won’t ever be disassembling or uninstalling it, the manual may not be particularly useful to you.
A note about warranties

Most warranties aren’t worth the paper they are printed on. They’re either of short duration such that the products all die the day after the warranty expires or you have to jump through so many hoops to ship the product for repair that you’ll probably buy a replacement and not bother. If you decide a warranty is worth keeping, be sure to register the product (per the instructions) and then attach the warranty to the manual.

Organizing the manuals

If you have ample filing space, an interior folder for each of the above categories should suffice, though if any of your manuals are hefty, you might want a few folders for extended categories; if a lot of the manuals are “fat,” you might need quite a few hanging folders. Don’t overstuff!

SURPRISE: Instruction manuals don’t have to live in your regular personal or family file system! 

Depending on the number and nature of the appliances in your home, you might use a three-ring binder with all of the kitchen appliance manuals (in sheet protectors). Don’t waste valuable kitchen counter space; just tuck the binder somewhere accessible, like the cabinet above your stove exhaust. Keep hardware and software manuals in magazine holders on the bookshelf nearest your computer.

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It’s tempting to keep any paper related to your home just in case, but that leads to clutter. Ask yourself:

Why/when would I need this paper? 

What’s the worst that could happen if I no longer had this manual? Most manuals are available online. When Paper Mommy bought a new TV last year, there was no paper manual, so we just Googled the make and model, and found the instructions online.

Check these classic Paper Doll posts for advice on downsizing and organizing your manuals:

YouTube is full of helpful videos, and web sites offering online user and repair manuals, like Fix It Now, SkillCat Appliance Manual Lookup Tool, and User’s Manual Guide abound.

There are also apps for finding digital versions of manuals, like The Lost Manual, which you can browse by brand or item category. 

Decorating/Remodeling Plans 

If all those HGTV remodeling shows give you joy, make room in your filing system for:

  • Project notes and plans for decorating and/or remodeling
  • Project budgets
  • Swatches of upholstery and paint samples
  • Receipts — Generally, all receipts go in the Financial files. However, once the current tax year has passed, if these receipts don’t fit your “big ticket item” file needs, they may still be useful for identifying where you purchased items you might need repaired, replaced, or augmented. 

Gardening Records

Are you an out-of-doors person? Paper Doll is decidedly in-of-doors. However, if your yard includes plants, shrubbery, or heirloom flowers or you have a vegetable garden for which you need to maintain adequate rotation records year-after-year, make a few interior folders for a gardening  hanging folder. (Digital files or apps are equally fine. This is a low-stress category!)

PERSONAL FILES

We are all guilty of keeping excess personal papers out of habit. Maybe some secret part of us imagines we’ll be asked to provide resources for our biographers someday? Perhaps we fear our memories will fail in our later years. (But will memories of having earned Most Valuable Player in 8th grade soccer matter to us in our 80s?) Paper Doll won’t judge you, but make things easy on yourself and those who will come after by making your personal files orderly.

Break down your family’s Personal section by individual (just as we did last week for Medical); each person’s records are divided into items of personal history and personal interest. If your entire family has specific activities or pursuits (like attending your house of worship or planning an annual family reunion), create a “family” section as if the collective family were an additional family member.

Personal History

These represent who you were and are. Each sub-category can generally go into its own interior folder.

Educational History

The older you are, the less important these documents become for use in the outside world; it’s up to you to determine how much you value them for personal use. 

  • Academic transcripts
  • Standardize test scores (SAT or ACT, GRE, GMAT, LSAT, MCAT)
  • Letters of recommendations from professors or academic mentors
  • Select academic papers — If you have your diploma, I encourage you to toss anything that doesn’t make your heart sing. Unless you wrote a brilliant blue book essay or world renowned paper, only keep what bolsters your self-esteem (and only until you no longer feel the need for extrinsic rewards).
  • Continuing education credits or certificates
  • Your senior or graduate thesis (If it’s bound and published, display it on your bookshelves or coffee table. Great job!)

Toddler Graduate created with Microsoft Bing Image Creator

Professional History

The longer you have been in your profession, and particularly the longer you have been out of a the workplace altogether, the less you need. Keep whatever records your profession requires; for everything else, pare things down to just what is truly meaningful. These may include:

  • Licenses and/or certifications — Only keep expired ones if your profession or insurance requires proof of prior licensing.
  • Resumes — Modern resumes are designed to be read by algorithms and are so different from what GenX or Boomers recall. Your LinkedIn is probably more accurate. Keep only what allows you to identify dates and locations. 
  • Professional letters of recommendation or of gratitude from clients, customers, superiors, or vendors. (Again, this is just for warming your heart.)
  • Citations of bravery or success
  • Newspaper clippings (but not the entire newspaper or section) noting your professional successes, wisdom, or acumen.
Military History

Basic military service records go in the VIP section of your legal paperwork; things like your separation paperwork allow you to prove your service record and collect VA and financial benefits. 

However, your military history also includes the more personal records of your time in the service. You may choose to maintain:

  • Enlistment records
  • Training and qualification records
  • Copies of your military separation papers (the originals will be with your VIPs)
  • Citations, decorations, and awards, along with copies of written references submitted in support of you earning them. 
  • Letters of commendation
  • Correspondence regarding replacement of medals

Toddler Navy created with Microsoft Bing Image Creator

Public Service History

Maybe you served in the Peace Corps or Teach for America. Are you a Big Brother or Big Sister? Do you hammer for Habitat for Humanity? Perhaps you’ve been involved in local or national politics or held leadership roles in your community. If you have documents or clippings that are meaningful to you, and which you will revisit, keep a folder of these.

PERSONAL INTERESTS

Generally, anything that brings you joy, delights your intellect, or warms your heart or soul falls under personal interest.

However, my advice on the personal interest category has changed so much in the 16 years since I began blogging. Nowadays, most of what you save is no longer clipped from tangible newspapers and magazines but from the internet, using the “web clipper” applet for Evernote, OneNote, Pinterest, or the bookmark or “save” feature in your social media accounts.

Pursuits

That said, if you do have documents and papers related to your physical and intellectual pursuits, you can make interior folders for these general interest categories.

  • Hobbies —  Keep only the reference material that provides information you don’t already know or can’t access quickly via the web.
  • Volunteer activities — Keep ID badges or registration materials you’ll need, plus memorabilia that is deeply meaningful to you.
  • Memberships — Unless you’re a member of a secret society (oooh, cool!), most of your materials will be digital. Be discerning about what you keep.
  • Issues/Interests — Read, purge (or share), and move on. Before you clip something tangible, Google the title to see if there’s a digital version you can save. (Unless it’s a photo of George Clooney; don’t toss photos of George Clooney. This is still a civilization!)
  • Genealogy — For expert help with this, see Paper Doll Interviews the Genealogy Organizers.
  • Travel — Travel magazines still abound, so if you are planning a trip using tangible resources, keep a folder for each location, but understand that the 21st-century world changes quickly. Verify the hours of operation of restaurants and sights via the web.
Success

Bask in tangible proof of personal successes. You’ll get no pushback from Paper Doll if you save letters of gratitude or praise, benchmark chips (30 days, 1 year, etc.) from 12-step programs, or anything that reminds you of challenges surmounted. We all have rough periods, and a success file can help us through them. (As mentioned this before, keep a Success folder or tag in your email for the same purposes.)

Correspondence

Save real correspondence that contains valuable information or emotional weight; part with cards penned by Hallmark containing only a scribbled signature. 

Inspiration

We GenXers posted magazine clippings on the inside of our high school lockers; we graduated but never stopped clipping! Sadly, print magazines have gone the way landline phones. If you come across print materials that stir you to think, write, create, or dream and really will review your inspiration folder, have it it. But please consider just saving it to your photo app.

Humor

Before the internet, people used to photocopy jokes (and then photocopy the photocopies) and cartoons; it was the precursor to sharing memes and reels on the web. A shocking number of people still have piles of those old jokes and giggle when they come across them while sorting piles of clutter. In a perfect world, I’d have you scan them to an album in your photos or upload them to a notes app, but you probably won’t do that. At least gather up your tee-hees, toss what’s offensive or outdated, and keep a folder labeled Funny to flip through on days when you’re feeling down.

While this ends our Reference File Master Class series, we will be examining classic Paper Doll topics, especially file-related, throughout 2024. 

For reference (no pun intended), the entire series can be found at the following links:

 

Posted in Digital, Manuals, Paper Organizing | 16 Comments »

Reference Files Master Class (Part 3) — Medical Papers

Posted on: January 29th, 2024 by Julie Bestry | 16 Comments

For our final post of Get Organized & Be Productive (GO) Month, we’re continuing our refresh of classic posts and essential concepts in paper organizing. So far, we’ve looked at: 

Paper Doll Shares 12 Kinds of Paper To Declutter Now

Reference Files Master Class (Part 1) — The Essentials of Paper Filing

Reference Files Master Class (Part 2) — Financial and Legal Papers 

Today, we continue onward with the next element of the reference papers in your personal or family filing system.

  • Financial
  • Legal
  • Medical
  • Household
  • Personal

MEDICAL FILES

There’s a special name the information you maintain about your medical life: a personal health record (PHR). With the financial and legal documents we covered last week, I strongly recommended using to develop your file management skills; however, you’ll see that with medical information, I recommend a hybrid approach with paper and sometimes a digital one.

Your Role as Personal/Family Medical Historian

You may wonder why you might need to keep medical paperwork of any kind. After all, don’t the doctors all have your files? It’s not like the average person has a collection of all their own dental X-rays and test results laying around. But there are certain reasons you should keep at least some of your medical information, if not your actual records. For example:

  • When you go to a new health care provider or visit the hospital, you will be asked for a detailed medical history. Will you really remember the years and types of all of your (or your family members’) illnesses, surgeries, and complications? Which physicians were seen and what their contact information was? Which medications caused allergic reactions? It’s your job to provide that information.
  • If you change health insurance companies or apply for life insurance, you’ll have to provide a detailed medical history. If you are found to have given even the teeniest of wrong answers, your policy could be voided retroactively and you could be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars of healthcare!
  • First responders may need information in a hurry. This is why you need to keep updated copies of your medication lists (medication names, dosages, prescribing physicians) in multiple places, immediately accessible. (See Organize to Help First Responders: The Vial Of Life for details on this specific issue.)
  • Quick access to accurate information may determine a medical course of action. For example, if your college student calls to say they had a minor accident and the student health center wants to know how long ago they had a tetanus booster, don’t you want to give the right answer? (Better yet, arm your adult kids with copies of their records so they’ll know!)

Doctor With Stethascope Photo by Online Marketing impulsq on Unsplash

  • If you’re in the ER or at Urgent Care and are asked a question about your medical history, you can’t rely on your primary care physician’s records. The doctor’s staff may be unreachable on weekends and holidays, or in the evenings, or on inclement weather days.
  • Your physician or dentist may retire with little notice, giving you no chance to get copies of records. (I’ve had three doctors and a dentist retire in the last 5 years. Yes, I’m starting to take it personally!)
  • If you can prove you’ve already been tested for certain things, you may be able to avoid unnecessary (and expensive) medical tests.
  • If you have proof of immunizations, you can make sure you’re protected against all sorts of yuckies without having duplicate ouchies! (Yes, these are the correct medical terms.) Proof also ensures that your children can attend school or go to summer camp. (You do not want to spend the days prior to driving cross-country to your student’s new campus rushing to find a physician who will squeeze your 18-year-old in for shots.)  
  • Speaking of immunizations, if you ever work or vacation outside North America, you may need proof of health and immunization for travel; you don’t want to have to contact your doctor over and over and be beholden to their convenience and schedules. (For more, check the CDC’s Yellow Book on Traveler’s Health.)

Additionally, you may be responsible for making decisions or overseeing care for someone else. This might be your child or your spouse, where you can rely on your memory. But what if you’re involved in the care of an elderly and/or ailing relative? Wouldn’t you prefer they had this information organized and available to you?

And what if you’re the one who is ill and needing someone to advocate for your medical well-being? While it’s important for your healthcare proxy (the person with your medical Power of Attorney) to have access to the full picture, sometimes it’s just helpful for your loved ones to be able to provide educated input when you are feeling woozy or distressed. 

Methods for Organizing Medical Information

To start, create a hanging folder for each person in the household. How many internal folders you’ll need for each person depends on how much information pertains to each individual.

One folder may suffice for younger, healthier individuals with limited records. However, my clients often use three — one for medical information, one for dental information (often including extensive orthodontia plans), and one for vision (to track vision changes and safely keep eyeglass or contact lens prescriptions until needed). If anyone in the family has a specific, ongoing medical condition (diabetes, arthritis, etc.) add extra interior folders as needed so you can track specialized medical information.

There are other auxiliary methods for maintaining medical records: 

  • 3-ring binders — If you or someone in your family has a complicated medical situation, a chronic illness, or is undergoing cancer treatment or dialysis, and is visiting many doctors and hospitals, often having to supply information repeatedly, a sectioned-three ring binder for mobile use may make it easier for you to take notes or have providers make copies of your information. Consider this an adjunct to your paper file system, with sections for appointment dates, notes, special instructions, and test results.
  • Medical Organizer — If you are in college or newly graduated, your filing space in a dorm or small apartment may be limited. To get you started, you may want to use a something like the multi-pocked Smead All-in-One Healthcare and Wellness Organizer.
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  • Digital records (DIY approach) — Spreadsheets like Excel or Google sheets, or typing and/or scanning to note-taking apps like Evernote or OneNote allow you to maintain records and access them digitally. Collect and collate your paper files first; transfer notes once you feel like you have a handle on things. 
  • Digital records (using apps) — There are a number of Personal Heath Record apps available, from Apple Health and Android Health built into your phone, to free and paid apps like MyID, FootprintID, and MyChart. 
  • Patient Portals — Doctors, medical groups, and hospitals have patient portals where the medical providers store information for you (and other providers to access). Depending on the portal, you may be able to upload and download information for you own use.

DIY digital storage, PHR apps, and patient portals all have advantages and disadvantages for different user types; we’ll discuss these in greater depth in a future post.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the old saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” A bit of preventative organizing of your files and information is worth the effort to preserve your time, money, and possibly even your health.

I'm sure you're familiar with the old saying, 'An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.' A bit of preventative organizing of your files and information is worth the effort to preserve your time, money, and possibly your… Share on X

Let’s look at the kinds of information you can and should maintain.

MEDICAL CONTACTS

In the tense moments of an emergency (or the fuzzy moments of day 2 of the flu), you don’t want to have to rely on your memory to contact the right medical professional.

Keep contact information for each medical professional seen by each person in the household.

For each health care practitioner, include the name, address, phone, and email address. Some providers still use and require fax machines. Yes, just like 1987. If they list one on their website or appointment cards, put it in your records; you never know if another physician will have to send or receive requests via fax.

If you use your provider’s online patient portal, note how you access it (app? URL in the browser?) and your login credentials.

To get you started, collect information for any of the following that are (or might be) applicable for the members of your household:

  • Primary care physician (Internist/Family Practitioner)
  • Pediatrician
  • Gynecologist/Obstetrician
  • Specialists (endocrinologist, pulmonologist, cardiologist, etc.)
  • Dentist/Orthodontist
  • Optometrist/Ophthalmologist
  • Alternative Care Practitioners (acupuncturist, chiropractors, herbalist, massage therapist)
  • Nurse line for your insurance company, for when you’re not sure what to do, whether something is an emergency, or whom to see. If you do not have insurance, check to see if your state’s Department of Health has an Ask-a-Nurse line.
  • Your regular pharmacy — Additionally, if you spend time in other places (Grandma’s house in Florida, a time-share, your child’s college town), list your preferred pharmacies there, too.

Unless one family member sees a lot of specialists, a sheet or two paper tucked into a folder in the front of the household medical section (in front of personalized folders) usually suffices.

If you create a mobile medical binder, put this at the front.

Digital approaches to tracking medical contacts

If you’re building a personal health record digitally, either in addition to or instead of a paper record, your options (from least to most effort) include:

  • Snap photos of appointment/contact cards and store in an album in your phone’s photo app (labeled Medical Contacts) or in a cloud-based note storage system like Evernote or One Note.
  • Enter each contact in your phone’s contact app. You may want to enter each physician prefixed with “Dr.” (even if, strictly speaking, they aren’t doctors) or “Med” so that when you look at your phone, all medical professionals will be in sequence for quick and easy scrolling. That way, if you’re feeling panicky, you can focus on all likely names at once.
  • Create a page in a spreadsheet (like Excel or Google Sheets) for medical contacts. Don’t forget that you can have multiple spreadsheets in a workbook, with each sheet having its own tab at the bottom, so you could build your entire personal health record in one workbook, for you and your entire family. 
  • Use the contact fields in a medical record/PHR app.
  • Keep a contact list in your primary care provider’s medical portal if there’s a field or module for that.

As a caveat, know that you can’t always get on hospital WiFi or access cell service, and when panicked you may not be able to remember your passwords. (A digital password manager helps with the latter.)

MEDICAL HISTORY

  • Basic details “cover” page — birth date, sex assigned at birth, blood type, organ donor status, status conditions you’d want to remember to share first (organ recipient, current cancer diagnosis, diabetes, etc.) 
  • Medications (see next section)
  • Immunization records — Use these links to review what childhood and adult vaccines are standard and/or required: 

If you have difficulty getting your immunization records, check out the CDC’s recommendations for locating your “owie” records. Additionally, you may be able to access your (or your children’s) immunization records through your state’s Immunization Information Systems (IIS).

  • Test Results — Keep a record of standard and specialized screening results like cholesterol and other blood test results, and bone density tests for women, and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests for men, as well as letters confirming results of colonoscopies, mammograms, pap smears, etc.
  • Personal Medical History — Log any serious illnesses, fractures, accidents, surgeries, transfusions, or procedures. 
  • List any chronic (long-term) health conditions, such as arthritis, asthma, diabetes, or high blood pressure.
  • Log all reproductive health and pregnancy history. 
  • List mental health issues — as with physical health, note any mental health conditions, treatments, and medications as well as the dates.
  • Record any implanted medical devices — These may include pacemakers, artificial hip or knee joints, artificial heart valves, implanted lenses after cataract removal, etc. Patients with implants are given cards with serial numbers. Maintain the cards, but keep copies with you (in your wallet or digitally), for when you travel.
  • Keep a detailed family medical history — Use an online template, like this one from the American Medical Association or the US Surgeon General’s My Family Health Portrait.

MEDICATIONS

What medications do you take?

If you are relatively young and healthy, your response to the inquiry might just be one daily Flintstones vitamin, preferably an orange Dino or purple BamBam. But if you are over 40 in North America, there’s a good chance you take any of a variety of meds for cholesterol, GERD, blood pressure, blood glucose, anxiety, depression, and/or other conditions.

As I’ve previously written, in November Paper Mommy fell and fractured her pelvis in two places. In the ER, and again when she was moved to a room, she was asked about her medications. This is not a fast, easy recitation for most people, and wouldn’t be easy to recall when in agonizing pain. I happened to call just as the nurse was beginning to log the information, and asked if my mom would prefer me to fill the nurse in. Because we’d set up primary care provider’s patient portal, I was able to log in and recite each prescribed medication, vitamin, and mineral, dosage, and time of day it was taken.

Reporting accurate meds and dosages ensures that care for secondary issues isn’t compromised when an acute condition causes hospitalization.

Prescription Photo by Polina Tankilevitch at Pexels

For most families, a page in each individual’s “Medical” folder may be enough. However, if your family members take many prescriptions, you may wish to keep a separate folder to track all medications. Compile your own list or spreadsheet, or download a free template, then print a copy for your files (and your binder, if applicable).

Include each medication’s brand or generic name, dosage, frequency (number of dosages per period — as needed, daily, weekly), prescriber (if applicable), purpose and date started. It may also be helpful to list the method (pill, inhaled, injection, patch, etc.). Remember to reference:

  • Prescriptions — Your instinct will be to list meds you take every day, like oral contraceptives or meds for preventative and treatment purposes. But don’t forget acute-care drugs that you might take as needed, like anti-vertigo meds, Epi pens, migraine medicine, or rescue inhalers. Log everything!
  • Dietary supplements — Some vitamins, minerals, and health beverages can, even when not prescribed, can have an adverse effect on your health. 
  • Herbal remedies — Whether you take them based on your own research or as recommended by alternative care providers, a full health record (and report to physicians) must include these.
  • Non-prescription medications — Include low-dose aspirin therapies for preventing heart disease and stroke, or any other OTC meds you take.

ALLERGIES

Keep a page in each family member’s medical folder to note whatever allergies they have to:

DENTAL AND ORTHODONTIC RECORDS

Dental health is closely tied to medical health. Oral health can impact cardiac and hematological health and pregnancy, and conditions like diabetes and osteoporosis can impact oral health. Good medical and dental records complement one another.

Don’t worry if you don’t have a detailed dental treatment plan, but if your doctor or orthodontist provides a written treatment plan, keep it in that individual’s Dental folder. Keep notes regarding when you’ve had dental X-rays and what procedures you’ve undergone.

Dental Photo by Enis Yavuz on Unsplash

Your dentist may need to know what medications you take, particularly blood thinners, and what medical conditions (like asthma, mitral valve prolapse, or epilepsy) you have, to ensure safe treatment.

VISION CARE RECORDS

Keep records of your prescriptions for easy vision-wear re-ordering; you never know when your eye doctor might retire. If you don’t see the same ophthalmologist every time, consider keeping copies of your old eyeglass/contact lens prescriptions in your vision care folder, in reverse chronological order.

VETERINARY RECORDS

You probably consider your pets to be part of the family. Keep veterinary medical records in hanging files just behind those of the human family members. Each pet needs just one file folder — file reports and proof of shots in reverse chronological order. (Just pop each new thing in the front of the folder.)

HOW TO GET YOUR RECORDS

In your twenties, your medical file may only include your immunization record and notes on occasional healthcare visits. However, starting your filing system early will make it much easier to know where to put notes as your medical history (and family) grows.

What if you don’t even have any medical records to even start this paperwork? 

  • Check with your parents.

It’s possible that your mom kept your childhood immunization records with your baby book. Paper Mommy did, and it made it easier when I was trying to figure out when and whether I’d had certain types of immunizations.

  • Contact your doctors’ offices and tell them you want to create a personal health record.

If you don’t have a complex medical history, this might be as easy as reaching out to your childhood pediatrician (if they’re still practicing) and your current primary care physician. Alternatively, you could wait until your next appointment, and request your records then.

If you’ve had multiple physicians — not the random provider you saw when you visited the Doc-in-the-Box you had when you had a cold 15 years ago, but specialists you’ve visited for diagnoses and/or treatment — try to make a list, do some Googling, and see what contact information you can put together. Then contact them to request copies of your records. 

If you’ve had any serious hospitalizations, contact the hospitals to see what records you can get. For any physicians, clinics, or hospitals, the longer ago it was, the harder it will be to get your records. But something is always better than nothing.

You have a legal right under HIPAA to obtain copies of your medical records. 

  • Be specific about which medical records you want.

You probably don’t need every single record. After my father died, I went through the paperwork he’d saved, and there was everything from office visit summaries to medication lists that were just copies of records from the prior appointment. Get the essentials, not the also-rans.

  • Sign a release form.

Each office will make you sign a form to release records to yourself just as though you were authorizing them to release the records to another doctor, insurer, or individual.

  • Be prepared to pay a copying fee.

Depending on how extensive your records are, you may be asked to pay a fee to cover the time and labor for copying the files; you can avoid a mailing fee if you can offer to pick the files up from the office yourself. Ask how long it will take to get copies of your records.

Stay healthy, work toward collecting this information slowly, and next week we’ll close out our look at the five major personal filing categories with household and personal papers. 

For reference, the entire series can be found at the following links:

Posted in General, Medical, Paper Mommy, Paper Organizing, Professional Organizing | 16 Comments »

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