Time for a clean out

My wallet got a lot lighter this morning.

I didn’t spend a lot of money or anything like that. (I’d have to have a lot of money in the first place to do that.) I simply cleared my wallet of excess paper.

I found a receipt from the parking area at Perth International Airport dated late last month, a couple of automatic teller machine receipts (very helpful if I want to know what was in our account at the start of December last year), a card telling me that I had an appointment 11 days ago (itโ€™s alright, I had remembered and I did make it), assorted supermarket receipts and a few other bits and pieces.

I do clean out my wallet every now and then. By the date on the receipts, the last time I cleaned it out was early last month. How often do you clean out your wallet or purse. Are there lots of receipts and other bits and pieces that could do with throwing out? If you checked right now, what’s the oldest receipt you’d find in there?

After the big clean out I’m just left with the essentials. There’s a bunch of cards that range from credit cards to frequent shopper type cards for shops that I shop at very infrequently. There’s my frequent flyer card, which comes in handy every three years or so when I fly. I’ve also got a Medicare Card, a health insurance card as well as blood and organ donor cards. There’s even a very small amount of cash.

Then if I look really hard, there’s a small, tattered note that my daughter, Emily, wrote me some time back telling me that she loves me. At least there’s one thing of true value in there.

Posted by Rodney Olsen

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About the author

Rodney Olsen

Rodney is a husband, father, cyclist, blogger and podcaster from Perth Western Australia.

He previously worked in radio for about 25 years but these days he spends his time at Compassion Australia, working towards releasing children from poverty in Jesus' name.

The views he expresses here are his own.

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9 Comments

  • I’m not sure how often I clean out my wallet exactly. I am sure that it’s not as often as I should. I’m a little undecided about whether or not I should call an excavation crew to assist next time.

  • I clean it out every Monday (only because I have to find all of the receipts from the weekend to enter into the checkbook).

    This is an excellent QOTD by the way. I’m going to use it for Tuesday.

  • The main paper I find in my wallet is automatic teller machine accounts. Other paper work usually ends up in my car glovebox which I clean out when it no longer closes.

  • My wallet typically gets fatter and fatter with receipts until it doesn’t close properly – at which point I start getting annoyed with it *but don’t clean it out*…

    Of course, “cleaning it out” really means dumping it all somewhere else to deal with later… which doesn’t get done until you need a specific receipt ๐Ÿ™‚

  • Clean out my purse? I just keep buying bigger ones! I actually clean it out about twice a year so there is stuff in there that is five months old. Not all of it is mine though. Since it isn’t manly to carry a purse anything extra of my husband’s ends up in there too.

  • Clean out? You mean like in REMOVING old things? What a bizarre concept. I shall have to write a blog entry about this. Cleaning out….whoda thunk?

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