To Dump or not to Dump

Alright, I admit it. After 33 years of marriage, you’d think I’d have realized it was me not him who had the most piles of inconsequential papers. Now my piles are having babies, and all are spilling out of the roll-top desk, covering most of my horizontal surfaces.

How I got to be a scrap saver has to be my next project toward enlightenment so I can stop my piles from growing so tall I‘ll shut out the darn light. And of course I’ll have to make an apology for all the huffy retorts to Y when he’d chide me for buying another file cabinet rather than cleaning out the ones that were overflowing.

Maybe my saving was because I was raised by depression era parents. After all, my father, for a time, was homeless with holes in his shoes and no coat in winter. My mom learned thriftiness to the point of fanaticism. The only influence keeping our home from resembling a hoarders retreat was that my mother actually used every scrap she saved. Between her follow-through and the military (we moved every 18 months to three years and were allowed only 3000 lb of household weight a move) we had a tidy house.

Before one such move, my 1st- Sgt, Marine Corps father took me through my top dresser drawers where I’d squirreled away all my precious bits of childhood paraphernalia. If I hadn’t used it or worn it in six months, out it went: broken necklaces, rocks, unfinished projects, one favorite sock. All had to go into the trash until I could reduce my favorite things into a shoe box.

Now I’ve got a three bedroom house chuck full of his and hers collections from the past with matching unfinished projects and things we might need for the future. I’m overwhelmed and can only console myself with reassurances that it’s not all mine. But I don't know what to do with his without going through it, unlike his promise that if anything ever happened to me he would cheerfully haul the contents of my office to the dump without looking at it. When he told me this, I was crushed, but I can see his point now. Fifty years of writing grows like Alice in Wonderland after biting a ‘grow’ cookie. In comparison, I do have more ‘stuff’ than he does. I’ll have to decide what to do with all the wonderful ideas I’ve saved for future reference, and before I eliminate any of his collections, I’m deciding to practice on my own. Thank goodness for Good Will and local thrift shops. Sending my prizes back into the world for someone else to collect eases the pain, a bit. Now all I have to do, after depositing my treasures at the back door, is stop myself from going in the front door to find other goodies.