"Because you never know...."
My mother likes to keep things, and is forever uttering the irritating words "you never know when you might need it".

As an administrator she has always kept meticulous paper records of everything she does.

Now that it's all computerised, she still keeps meticulous paper records of everything she does, every email she ever sends or receives etc. And I mean every one. Even crappy little one-line messages that are totally unimportant, get printed out and filed away.

Which wouldn't in itself be so bad, were it not for the fact that she keeps a copy on the computer itself as well ("because you never know when I might need it and not have the paper copy to hand").

Every time she starts running out of space on her computer which is 4 times the size of mine, I plead with her to delete things - normally she just gets herself some more memory.

She also uses Excel to keep a note of her personal finances. This caused something of a panic a few years back when her entire accounts file corrupted. Turns out that single file had accounts going back about 5 years ("because you never know when I might need to check back and see how much I spent at Tesco on the 4th of June 1945")

The file was rescued, she was suitably reprimanded and advised to split it into smaller parts. 6 months later it happened all over again.

The irony is I think that's the only thing on her computer that she doesn't have a paper back-up copy of...
(Eldred, Fri 22 Sep 2006, 14:26, Reply)