WHY WOULD I KEEP THESE?

As I have mentioned before in my various musings, I have set out to rid myself of some of the junk that I've accumulated over my adult life. Now don't get me wrong, I am not one of those people who is a compulsive collector - I have seen the rooms of someone like that. I'm not even close, but I do see that it could be easy to slip over to a really compulsive saver. I'm going to see that that doesn't happen to me as I get older.

The first job I tackled was my cup collection. I gave away a lot of my cups. I did save 4 Christmas cups, a few cups that my daughter Erin brought to me from places she's visited, and about 8 cups that will sit in our cupboard for everyday coffee-drinking. I must admit that I can never pass a good-looking cup in a store without lifting and feeling it, but so far I've managed to set each one back on the shelf and walk away. Where this is the hardest to do is at Starbucks, where I go each Friday morning to fortify myself for the grocery-shopping chore. If I have a breakdown, it will be at Starbucks. But so far, so good.

The next project I tackled, which just happened this past weekend, is my accumulated new and used file folders. They are of all sizes and colors. I can't exactly call this a "collection" because as every old secretary knows, there is nothing more aggravating than needing a file folder and not having one the right kind at your fingertips. Over the years in my pursuit of family history I have used three legal sized, four-drawer file cabinets and one letter-sized, two-drawer file cabinet. I am loathe to throw away a folder if it is in reasonably good condition -- but this weekend in checking the contents of boxes stored on my closet shelves, I discovered I had three huge boxes of file folders just waiting to be needed. To be honest with you, I was a little embarrassed at how many I had saved. Considering that I am now downsizing my genealogy files, I am going to be needing less, not more, of them. So what to do?

While Jerry was golfing yesterday and after Erin left from our regular Sunday morning coffee-time, I hauled down all three boxes and ruthlessly sorted them. I decided I would keep about 10 large and 10 small folders for myself and toss the rest in the dumpster. Without going into too much detail, I will just let you know that I did throw away into the dumpster the worst-looking of the folders, probably 75 or so. I put about 50 of the decent one into a box and will deliver them tonight to a friend who says she can use them. And the rest, I would estimate about 100, all colored and unused, went back into the box and then back up on the closet shelf. I didn't do quite as good on the folders as I did on the cups, but dropping from three to one box is a great improvement, I think. And I do feel happy at what I've kept for myself.

I'm going to start thinning out my books next. I try my best not to buy them anymore. I have turned into the library's best patron. But it is amazing how many books mysteriously creep back up on my shelves due to Abebooks.com. It's their fault for always having what I look for. But I've got to be ruthless there too. Not only is it reading books that I need to move out but it is also my collection of yearbooks. I have all mine from junior high school, high school and college. Jerry has his from high school and college. And we have them from his first wife's high school and college too. Amazingly, over the years we've also managed to find old yearbooks from our parents' years in high school. Oh, what to do with all of these! How can we part with them? What will be done with them by our kids when we die? Tossed, I fear. Dealing with books is a lot harder than dealing with cups and file folders. Much more painful. But I think there certainly must be archives somewhere that would love to receive what we choose to part with. So that's the next project: tackling the bookshelves.

Overall I feel good with the progress I'm making. Don't think for a minute that our apartment is going to start looking bare. We've a long way to go before that happens. I doubt if you would notice a difference at all, but I can sure tell! And that is definitely a good feeling!