Erasing the year

Okay, I did the horrible thing yesterday and went through the house for all papery traces of the last eight or nine months - junk mail, notes, notices, you name it. For a paperless society we sure still use a lot of paper! And now I've put a lot more back into the recycling process.

I'm careful about bringing junk into the house, and I toss a lot into the recycling box in the kitchen within moments of its crossing the threshold, but the stuff I have to keep a few weeks tends to make itself at home within just a few days.

And then there is that nagging thought - what if I want to check those details in retrospect? what if I will have such fond memories of that event that this scrap of paper will recall them in sharper focus? I expect these questions are common, judging by the persistence of the scrapbooking industry. But when it comes to shedding they sure can be a nuisance.

This last year, though - whoa. There's so much in there I will actively try to avoid remembering, I didn't want to tackle the pile at all. And now that I'm done, I feel more than the usual lift you get from a freshly tidied space. I feel closure.

With just a little bit of ick, because when I dug through the remains I found my order for the routine bloodwork I was supposed to have done back in March. Think I can pretend it stayed lost?