Shredding

Shredding

Working at my desk, Judy came carrying a box full of miscellaneous items. She was making room in our bedroom drawers and my stuff was in the way. I asked her to set it down on the floor and promised to go through it. Days later I started digging into my collectibles. It was time to toss and shred.

I forgot I collected cuff links back in the day when I wore starched white shirts with French cuffs: a plastic bag full of links I would never use. I couldn’t toss them. Then there was a plastic bag of foreign coins: one pound coins from the UK, mucho pesos from Mexico, Canadian loons,  and Kenyan coin currency. Not sure what I can do with all that cash. I decided to save it just in case.

Then there was an assortment of jack knives, coin purses, money clips and tangled balls of electronic cords from antiquated pagers, cell phones and digital cameras. My lost duck call suddenly reappeared along with several AC-DC adaptors. I had no idea I was such a pack rat. I blame Judy for bringing it to my attention.

The shredding component had to do with old Montana and Minnesota driver’s licenses. If that wasn’t enough, I found two fist fulls of hunting licenses that dated  back to our time in Havre. Not wanting to throw them in the trash I decided to hand feed them into my shredder. The shredder balked at all the pieces of bureaucratic red tape and seized up. After repeated pushing the forward and reverse button my shredder was free of license chewing. The rest went in the trash.

The moral of this blog is obvious. Whenever your spouse presents you with a box(s) of forgotten collectibles, immediately, without forethought, proceed to the garbage can. If you don’t, much time will be wasted deciding what to keep and what to toss. What is saved then becomes the seed bed of more boxes of stuff.

Tossing is much better than hoarding.

P.S. I don’t do garage sales!