Basement cleaning and memory lane

[plonq]

One of the projects atara and I set out for ourselves is to rid the basement of clutter. The bulk of the clutter is in the form of boxes of (mostly) junk that have been stacked down there since she moved in. Some of them contain things that I had never felt the need to unpack when I moved here, and things that she likewise chose to leave packed when she moved in.

So far we have bundled up more than 90% of it to be thrown in the trash - not surprising, since if we got by without it for this long, it's obviously stuff that we just didn't need. There are a handful of things I have found that I am unwilling to part with, and a few more things that I am throwing out, but not before making special note of them.

One of the "comment and toss" items I found was a fifteen-year-old note in my handwriting. Back when I first bought the house, I was stretched pretty much to my financial limits managing mortgage and car payments. I set up some accounting software on my laptop, and I made note if every penny that came in or went out. I wasn't to the budgeting stage yet, rather I was planning to spend a few months gathering money statistics so that I could determine where I could make cuts, and how much I could afford to budget for various things. I was almost manic in my information gathering, to the point where I could glance at the budget program and know how much change I had in my pocket.

I used to keep scraps of paper and a pen with me at all times so that I could track the money while I was out. The little note that I found was one such piece of paper, and it contained two line items:

Bus 1.35
Drunk Indian 1.00

What I gather from this note is that I gave a dollar to a pan-handler at the bus stop on my way home. I wonder what category I put that expense under?

Comments

[pierrekrahn.livejournal.com]

I would file the $1.35 for the bus as "Transportation" and the $1.00 for the drunk Indian as either "Entertainment" or "Insurance" depending if has threatening or not.