The filing cabinet
I've mentioned elsewhere there were a number of tasks that Hillary and I had slowly compiled. By the summer of 2017, we felt we were nearly ready to start addressing some of those.
The bike room was one of those things. There were a few things that had to happen before that room could be considered 'addressed' though. In December, I took the first step.
We had a big filing cabinet. Things were filed in there.
Things.
Mostly things that Hillary filed. I was bad at filing. Aspirationally, I scan everything and store the PDFs. In practice, I scan some things and store the PDFs.
Anyway, some samples of things I found as I was going through the filing cabinet included:
- Young Driver's workbook, complete with notes while Hillary was studying for her driver's test.
- Temporary driver's license from 1995.
- Multiple things where a license was sent to her in 1995-2000.
- Scholarship applications and responses prior to her starting at Queens.
- Various high school brochures and a couple of field trip notes. (Skills competition things.)
- Bank statements from 1998-2002, guess what? She spent lots of money at the Queens University bookstore.
I won't say she kept everything, but wow. If it seemed important, clearly, there was a place for it in the filing cabinet.
I purged a lot of the less interesting things and the various documents, booklets and marketing materials where I was pretty sure were kept only to spur her memory later in life.
I kept a decent sized folder of anything that was directly her writing or things that would corroborate my, "She kept everything." statements.
The filing cabinet went to the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store.
She may have been annoyed with me about this change. I think it had to happen though.