In the early days of our marriage my husband was an enthusiastic filer.

He would create folders for every imaginable domestic category and religiously tidy away anything that looked vaguely important into an old metal cabinet.

If we needed to lay our hands on the window cleaner's previous three bills, he knew exactly where to look.

I derided him at the time. Until our nuptials, my own filing system had been unsophisticated but adequate.

I had one box for final demands and another for old love letters, although it was hard sometimes to work out which was which.

It wasn't long, however, before I could see the benefits of my husband's thorough and efficient approach.

I stopped crying over letters from Seeboard and BT. And our home life began to run like clockwork.

But then we moved house, had a child, both got new jobs, had another child - all of which meant my husband needed to create more folders and do more filing.

And now neither of us has the time to maintain the system.

As a result, we have a large pile in our kitchen of letters, brochures, bills and forms to fill in that never gets any smaller.

Every so often we wade through it and discover we have missed or overlooked something really important.

So far this year we have failed to turn up to two hospital appointments, my husband didn't pay his Visa bill on time and we didn't realise until too late that something we'd really wanted to see at the theatre had already been and gone.

The most ridiculous oversight became apparent when my husband found my completed tax return two weeks after the end-of-January deadline.

I had forgotten to follow my accountant's simple instructions of "sign and send off". And it now looked as though I would be incurring a £100 penalty.

Even more ridiculous was the fact that I was actually due a rebate of £93. How stupid was that?

When the tax office sent through a notice of the fine and gave me a chance to appeal, I replied promptly.

The only excuse I could come up with was the embarrassing truth. I wrote that I had been so excited to hear I was getting some money back that it went out of my head to actually return the form - and it had ended up gathering crumbs in our kitchen in-tray.

Someone in the tax office had a heart - or a home filing system similar to ours. Because I heard this week that the penalty has been waived and the £93 is all mine.

"That was a lucky escape," said my husband. "But you really shouldn't let things pile up like this."

"Huh!" I snorted. "If we didn't have such a monster of a filing system, we wouldn't be so intimidated about tackling that pile. I'd rather we just dealt with the essentials and threw away the rest."

My husband looked horror-stricken. "Throw it away? But you never know when you might need things again. I've kept all my payslips since I started work."

"Yes and there's a good half a dozen of them floating around by the bread bin," I pointed out.

I can't help reflecting that my old system was more workable. I would reinstate it, except I've got no idea what has happened to my love letters.