And I thought teaching had a lot of paperwork!

                                      

   And I thought teaching had a lot of paperwork! 

Life admin- who needs it!

Daniella really made me laugh this week when she was complaining about the amount of life admin there is and she's right. Just today I have had letters arrive  for Tim's pension and French driving license. To be fair he was putting up curtain poles at the time and I know which one of those jobs I would rather be doing and more importantly which one I am capable of. 

According to a survey completed by the Independent newspaper, the average person carries out 109 life admin tasks every year, that's 9 every month!! You do need to be very organised especially when it comes to knowing where you have put things in your filing system. I have tried filing things alphabetically, by person and by topic but I still end up having to go through the whole lot to. My normal thing is to buy birthday cards well in advance and then forget where I have put them. 

Talking of cards, I buy all mine from my friend Yvonne (www.cymcards.co.uk) she has the best collection of cards I have ever seen. She has amazing system and I try to catch her out by asking for obscure cards but I never can and she always knows where to find them. 

In the UK I always used to lose dry cleaning tickets, in the end they offered to keep the ticket for me as they were so fed up with going through the rails of clothes asking me " is this it?" plus, I could never remember what I had taken in. A particularly embarassing day was when I realised I was in the wrong dry cleaners after the assistant had spent 15 minutes looking for my dress which turned out to be a scarf. 

The trouble is you think you are organised but something always slips through the net. I was in the car last month and realised that the car MOT (or contrôle technique as they are called here) was due to expire and the only reason I knew that was because it is stuck on the windscreen. So back to the filing system I went, to go through everything to find the paperwork that I needed. Surely I had put it in with all the other car paperwork but no!

French bureaucracy  - you can't avoid it!

The late M.de Gournay said" We have an illness in France which bids fair to play havoc with us; this illness is called bureaumania" and he should know he was an economist.  The word even comes for French as we all know bureau in French means desk or office. Just writing the word is such an effort -so many vowels!!. 

Paperwork is still a biggie here and you are expected to keep it for a very long time or you could be fined. Paperwork relating to your work and back account including cheque stubs and statements need to be kept for 5 years- people still write cheques here and they are normally in front of me in a queue. Deeds for properties, notaries' fees and property sales should be kept forever! Not easy if you are a chucker-out like me!

There is a lot of support here for Expats such as the Facebook groups. The comments on Expat life in France are really helpful and reassuring and you really can ask anything. There are also many companies that will help you organise things such as your Carte de Sejour at a reasonable fee.  Although bureaucracy here is notoriously longwinded, there are so many benefits to living in France apart from the food, wine, stable housing market and empty roads!.

I'm off to a Christmas decoration workshop next week - wish me luck it's bound to get messy especially if there is Vin Chaud!.