Today is “Clean Up” Day at MegaCorp.  It’s the annual office tradition when once a year the strange bedfellows of MegaCorp Facilities & Legal team up to get everyone to throw out old files.  Legal loves this day because they are always worried that in some deep file cabinet there is an old memo that could somehow be damning in a lawsuit.

As a result, there are giant trash cans and bins festooning the floors at MegaCorp, so that thousands of dutiful MegaCorp drones (like me) can sort through their old papers.  At a past company, we even had a prize for who ever could find the oldest memo in their files.  People found files that were decades old.

I usually ignore “Clean Up Day” as it is too much work to bother between meetings, even though I’ve been subjected to countless legal discoveries in the past.  I’m pretty careful about how I manage my paperwork for legal reasons and I think emails have become a bigger concern these days anyway.  That said, why not participate today?  Why not participate when I have just 21 weeks, 6 days left before my planned early retirement date in April (two weeks short of my 50th Birthday, or “Golden Jubilado”)?  Wouldn’t it be cathartic in an occupational way to start cleaning off the desktop??

Afterall, it is a Friday morning, and the few meetings I was supposed to have are now cancelled.  It’s amazing how many people now try to “work from home” on Fridays, isn’t it?

The above picture is the pile of paperwork that I’ve stacked on my credenza over the past 12-18 months.  (No, the rest of my office isn’t this messy.)  I’ve tried to go through it a couple times, but never made too much of a dent.  Today is probably a good day to blitz through it.  I’m sure most of it can be thrown out, since most files & presentations are also online.

One fun thing to do will be to find some old presentations that have my secret countdown numbers on them.  I’ve been marking all of my presentations (& emails) inconspicuously with the number of weeks I have remaining before my FIRE escape on April 1, 2016.  This week is “22”, but I have been doing it since April 1st of this year.  I’m sure I’ll find a few files with a “49” or a “37” in my pile.

Wish me luck … here we go …

Image Credit: MrFireStation.com