Busy, busy, busy

My darlings. I can't go one day without posting, for I feel bereft of your company and super-guilty, but I have been abducted by forces beyond my control. It is the beginning of the year and with it comes the reckoning. Looking at taxes, looking for work, doing a preemptive spring cleaning (given our recent scary balmy weather, you can't blame me).
This is what dawned on me as I upended the contents of my office in order to effect the spring cleaning: In order to organize, you have to disorganize first. You take one thing and you put it in another place until you find a new place for it (out of sight, out of mind), or you throw it out -- except if you are like me, you are constitutionally incapable of throwing shit out.
Or, you become reckless, like I did yesterday and suddenly had a powerful impulse to get rid of everything. Do I need my elementary school grades? As we age, certain things that seem quaint become rather irrelevant. But did I throw the grades out? No. Why? Because I thought that when I am old and alone in the world, I may want to be reminded of who I used to be. Of what was in my past, because I may not remember anything. So the grades stayed.
However, I started shredding tax returns older than 10 years. I was shredding paper dating to 1992. Shredding is a miserable occupation that robs you of your soul, your wit and your sense of humor. I filled up two big garbage bags with shredding and there is a ton of paper (bills, crap) still untouched. It is discouraging. This house gets this cleansing periodically. So how come I am up to my neck in stuff?
I will tell you this. I hate things. Hate them. Decorative items give me panic attacks. When you die, you can't take them with you. You will leave the mess for your poor surviving next of kin to sort out, and that is a thankless job, so if you can, chuck the stuff nobody'll want before you exit. It's the polite thing to do.