Packaging! Receipts! Statements! Shopper Bags! There's just too much paper!
It was baffling to me as to when the odious task of cleaning up my room has evolved from removing dust off the floor and shelves to sorting papers, receipts, bank statements, boxes and shopper bags of various sizes. I am not a shopaholic and certainly has not picked up the rabbit hoarding habit, but looking at the different manifestations of papers around me, I couldn't help but wonder since when have I permitted papers to intrude into my private life.
In fact, I should have realised that sorting paper has indeed become an indispensable and rather annoying trouble after I bought my very first paper shredder earlier of this year. It was a cheap purchase. However, between my stinginess and practicality, I had debated a long while before justifying the worthiness of the purchase. And now, I'm finding myself shredding more and more papers - out-dated bank statements, receipts from groceries and shops, unsolicited credit card and TV license applications which bear my name and address, etc! And I can tell you that this definitely is not after purchase self-reassurance trick I am performing on myself!
Not to mention are also the paper bags from clothing stores, the many hardcover boxes for accessories, including mobile phones, wallets, glasses, perfumes, cosmetics products, and the many sizes of Amazon delivery boxes! Simply listing all of these is an exhausting task itself!
Receiving papers and bags and boxes is one thing, processing them is another. Very often I question myself if a piece of paper is important? Do I need them for reference or the unlikely refund in the future? Can I recycle these bags and boxes for gift wraps even though I have not bought more than 5 gifts in the past 5 years? Surprisingly, the answers to these questions have almost always been "yes" "yes" "yes" and "yes"!
I really am tired of processing these papers. If I were at least amateur enough to develop an app by myself, I'd have started smashing my keyboard writing a programme which, regardless of which retailer I purchase a goods from, will always store the original receipts and statements, perhaps in the cloud, and which will then allow me to simply wipe the face of a any shop assistant (yes, not even printing it out!) with the required proof of purchase stretched on a my massive smartphone screen for any potential refund/clarification/argument/dispute!
The next phase will then involve writing a system which links the entire banking system, credit card companies, internet and phone service providers, visa processing embassies, or simply any organisation/club/fun house etc who requires your latest 3-month bank statements "in paper" before they start considering your application, which at this stage, should be electronic. Wouldn't it be a genius invention if one can simply click into a button, sign in somewhere with a secure password maybe 80-character long which combines letters, numbers, and the weird symbols on a keyboard, or even with biometric information, for examples, finger print, or eyeball scan, to then attach your bank statement, payslips, signature, passport information, etc etc, without the need to have all these, ahem, shitty printed documents?
And then we still have the packaging dilemma! When technology advances to a threshold beyond human imagination, perhaps we would then have the ability to transmit/deliver goods, not physically, but through the cloud? I'm not certain what would be the mechanism, although I'm almost certain it involves vaporising all goods to nano- or even smaller sizes which will then magically resemble itself when we get home.
Okay, maybe the last suggestion was a tiny bit unrealistic, but surely the first two are possible! Why have no one thought of this before, or are they just too happy to pick up all the papers and keep them in place? Or do they just don't care? I, certainly am no longer finding the need the deal with papers amusing.
Back to sorting and shredding papers, unhappy! :-(
In fact, I should have realised that sorting paper has indeed become an indispensable and rather annoying trouble after I bought my very first paper shredder earlier of this year. It was a cheap purchase. However, between my stinginess and practicality, I had debated a long while before justifying the worthiness of the purchase. And now, I'm finding myself shredding more and more papers - out-dated bank statements, receipts from groceries and shops, unsolicited credit card and TV license applications which bear my name and address, etc! And I can tell you that this definitely is not after purchase self-reassurance trick I am performing on myself!
Not to mention are also the paper bags from clothing stores, the many hardcover boxes for accessories, including mobile phones, wallets, glasses, perfumes, cosmetics products, and the many sizes of Amazon delivery boxes! Simply listing all of these is an exhausting task itself!
Receiving papers and bags and boxes is one thing, processing them is another. Very often I question myself if a piece of paper is important? Do I need them for reference or the unlikely refund in the future? Can I recycle these bags and boxes for gift wraps even though I have not bought more than 5 gifts in the past 5 years? Surprisingly, the answers to these questions have almost always been "yes" "yes" "yes" and "yes"!
I really am tired of processing these papers. If I were at least amateur enough to develop an app by myself, I'd have started smashing my keyboard writing a programme which, regardless of which retailer I purchase a goods from, will always store the original receipts and statements, perhaps in the cloud, and which will then allow me to simply wipe the face of a any shop assistant (yes, not even printing it out!) with the required proof of purchase stretched on a my massive smartphone screen for any potential refund/clarification/argument/dispute!
The next phase will then involve writing a system which links the entire banking system, credit card companies, internet and phone service providers, visa processing embassies, or simply any organisation/club/fun house etc who requires your latest 3-month bank statements "in paper" before they start considering your application, which at this stage, should be electronic. Wouldn't it be a genius invention if one can simply click into a button, sign in somewhere with a secure password maybe 80-character long which combines letters, numbers, and the weird symbols on a keyboard, or even with biometric information, for examples, finger print, or eyeball scan, to then attach your bank statement, payslips, signature, passport information, etc etc, without the need to have all these, ahem, shitty printed documents?
And then we still have the packaging dilemma! When technology advances to a threshold beyond human imagination, perhaps we would then have the ability to transmit/deliver goods, not physically, but through the cloud? I'm not certain what would be the mechanism, although I'm almost certain it involves vaporising all goods to nano- or even smaller sizes which will then magically resemble itself when we get home.
Okay, maybe the last suggestion was a tiny bit unrealistic, but surely the first two are possible! Why have no one thought of this before, or are they just too happy to pick up all the papers and keep them in place? Or do they just don't care? I, certainly am no longer finding the need the deal with papers amusing.
Back to sorting and shredding papers, unhappy! :-(
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