Hang Onto Your Deployment Binder

image via

Saturday night while I was helping my husband with his brief, we started looking for an introduction to deployment online packet (unclassified) we'd both seen before he left regarding the camp he was stationed at in Afghanistan. I searched for a good hour for it. Even though I found link after link, they all replied that the original document no longer existed. Beyond frustrating.

Desperate to find just one page of that document that he needed I kept searching but to no avail. Then I started working on all the other things my husband needed help with instead, fearing that I wouldn't be able to find the documentation we knew had once existed. Then at the last minute I remembered that I had at one time printed out a hard copy of that document for myself. I went scrambling for my deployment binder and found a copy of it within seconds.

I realize that even though I don't carry that binder around with me everytime I leave the house for a few hours anymore, and it's been a few months now since my husband came home from deployment, the information in that binder is often the only tie we have to everything we relied on during deployment and may need afterwards. There's no "undoing" the binder at this point. It's not going away. I am so glad I kept everything just as I had it while he was deployed and it was so easy to find.

I had a scanned image of the one page of the document we'd been searching for to my husband within minutes of finding it in my binder. Being organized with all the deployment related papers is still paying off even though deployment is over. It's also a great resource. It's amazing how quickly you start forgetting things. I have gone back to that binder several times just to refresh my memory about what actions we took with insurance, DMV, and other organizations while he was gone. It's crazy you forget, but you do. There is just too much going on during reintegration to keep your head on straight. Deployment is no different in that regard. Thank goodness I still have my deployment binder!