Health Form, Health Form, Who's Got The Health Form?

Tis the season for the school form onslaught.

 

This is the state of my dining room table on most days. 

In fact, I don't know why we call it a dining room anymore. We should change the name to "Pit of Paperwork Despair".

I think we eat in there about 4 times a year - generally in the winter, when we have company over for dinner. (In the summer, if we have company, we eat on the screened porch that John built.)

The rest of the time it is where all the papers go. School papers, business papers, junk mail, newspapers not yet read, sales fliers, bills, coupons, you name it. 

I do have a system for eventually organizing all of this. I have a specific place for bills, (as much as I'd like to ignore them, I have to see to it that they don't actually get lost or forgotten) I have a bag for all the sensitive paper like credit card offers that need to be burned, (I don't have a shredder) and I have a recycling system for all the junk and expired stuff. And I do try togo through it all at least once a week. Well, OK, sometimes it's once a month.

But there are always a number of things that are time sensitive and MUST BE DEALT WITH. And in order to be DEALT WITH, they need to be out where I CAN SEE THEM. Because if I can't SEE THEM, literally every time I walk through the room, I will completely forget about them.

Currently we have: forms for the changes to our health insurance, forms for school registration (3 different schools, 3 sets of forms) forms for school pictures, forms for immunization records, forms for upcoming field trips at the start of school, waivers of liability for said field trips (like I wouldn't just sue them anyway if my kid got hurt and it was the school's fault). 

It is generally overwhelming.

On a good day, only the important things are on display:

 

But the days the table looks this neat are few and far between - more often it is like the first picture. 

Which is how, during arguable one of the most stressful 8 months of my life, my oldest son was denied admission to one of the Universities to which he applied.

Nothing to do with his credentials - those were fine - it turned out his application was incomplete.

Guess who forgot to send in the application fee?

I wonder how on earth that happened.

Good thing he didn't want to go there anyway.