Shredding Through History

By nature, I am a pack rat. I save things — silly things, like brochures from places I've visited, or wanted to. Airline boarding passes. Tchotchkes from vendor fairs. Combine this with a propensity to being in a rush all the time, and my home office has quickly degenerated into a dumping ground. So, last month, I started setting time aside ot do some cleaning up. Five or six trash bags later and I'm approaching a usable space again (though to the untrained eye, the room still looks like a disaster area). I even stumbled across what had been a $25 gift card for Red Lobster that, thanks to "maintenance fees" was now worth somewhere around $11.

Those trash bags dont even begin to address all the stuff I shredded in the process. I bought a better paper (and CD!) shredder to help start the process, and I've given it a thorough workout. I mean, really — REALLY — do I need my detailed cell phone bills from four years ago? Pages of order-tracking information for products long since recieved? Paper proving how much I spent on drinking onboard a cruise in 2001? Gas or meal receipts on statements long since paid off? Of course, I looked at items before they were destroyed, so I got to re-live all sorts of moments: vacations, weekend getaways, retail-therapy shopping sprees and the like.

Future steps in the process include finally getting stuff up on eBay for sale like I've promised myself over the years, finding a good local used book (and/or CD) buyer, and the biggie: focusing future sentimentality on people and not scraps of paper and other junk.