de-clutter

I've hauled tons of crap out of this house and it has been painful. 

Painful finding the time to do it. 

Painful actually doing it. 

Painful reliving the memories of the stuff that I found or wondering why in the hell I kept it in the first place. Did I save that piece of paper because it was some life changing thing - and then I didn't follow up? 

A couple of weeks ago I was feeling particularly non-nostalgic and took advantage of that by doing major culling of papers. I filled baskets with papers and drove to the recycling bin only to have great remorse about throwing away decades of ticket stubs. I stood in the subzero afternoon picking through the papers, rescuing the tickets. 

The oldest I found was from 1980- Journey. 

And they don't take up that much room, really. 

It made me nostalgic for actual tickets. With online ticket sales you print out a bar code, festivals use wristbands, most of the music I see you just pay a cover - no ticket or I'm on 'the list' -- no actual ticket. 

I think I finally found a filing system that works for me. I'm not a file folder kind of person - but throwing it on a shelf seems to work. At least its separated out, right? 

I have managed to pare down - except that I have not had the energy to go through the box of photographs yet. I can only imagine what that will stir up...