Making Confetti…

The current working pile and the bag o confetti

I’m 52 years old.  And we live in a paper society.  I’ll pause while you do the math…  dum de dumm..

Did I mention that I hate filing? dum de dum….  [finger twiddling]

Ok… got the picture?

Ah yes, boxes and boxes of unsorted papers that represent the “history of my life”

Every time I’ve ever begun to tackle this now Herculean task of going through it, sorting, filing, and THROWING AWAY and SHREDDING IT!!!! two awful words pop into my head…

Yeah, but….  followed by their evil twins  “What if…”

Yeah, but…

… this is part of my life…

… this proved that I existed…

… OMG I had forgotten all about this…

and

What if…

… I need this someday…

… I become so rich and famous that one day a big library will want all my papers because they will provide a window into my life that some graduate student one day will peer through it all in amazement…

Yeah, Right!  LOL … ROFL…  Can we say “Bag o Bullshit?”

Boxes that are left – I’m about halfway through the job

The logical side of me knows that all of those reasons are bull.  This crap has got to go!

There is absolutely no LOGICAL reason to keep this stuff!  My heartstrings do NOT get a vote in this!

Sure, there was that interesting article I read where this family from the 1800s had saved every single bit of paper from their day to day lives.

Somehow the closet where all this stuff was got boarded over during a renovation and when the “Modern” family who bought the historic home started their own rennovations, tore into the wall, they discovered what turned out to be a TREASURE TROVE OF HISTORICAL DATA that the local historians at the nearby Ivy League school went into rapturous organisms over….

… because here was the lives of the “ordinary folks” of a distant time laid out like the pages in a book.

Well I don’t see that happening to me and my stuff and since space is limited and paper is heavy and I’m sick and tired of stumbling over it and worse moving it every time I move… it is time to bring out the shredder!!!!!   Bwahahahahahhahaha!!!!!!!

But….  it still tugs at the heart

My poor shredder is getting a workout

It isn’t logical but it feels like I’m throwing pieces of my life away.  sniff

So… somebody please comment and let me know that I’m not abnormal…  I’m not the only packrat and that I’m not the only one who has a tough time getting rid of 20 year old pay stubs?  And rental agreements and… well you get the idea.

Don’t get me wrong…  I’m a man on a mission.  The heartstrings can play whatever song they want…..

This stuff is headed to the dumpster!!!!! (in the form of Confetti) but IT IS headed out the door!!!!!  Now is the time.  I’m a man on a mission.

Wish me luck.

These boxes are just old bills like phone and electric and water and gas and income tax returns from when I was 18 through now and receipts for big purchases like TVs and beds and furniture and lawdy knows what else and pay stubs and my copies of employee evaluations and  yadda yadda yadda — all the stuff of daily living.

I’ve got OTHER boxes full of dance trip/competition memorabilia, ticket stubs, concert and theater programs, greeting cards, photos, etc.  THOSE I’m keeping — and will eventually sort and some of it will go neatly into notebooks and scrapbooks.

See ya on the dance floor (or at the dumpster with bags of confetti)