Decluttering

Every progress report my two grown children ever brought home from school, kindergarten through twelfth grade.

Newspaper articles listing  students who made the honor roll.

Forty-year-old resumes.

Texts from every CPE course I’ve taken for the past fifteen years.

Old financial records.  Lots and lots of financial records.

Computer diskettes containing God only knows what.  I haven’t had a computer equipped to look at them in years.

Every piece of artwork my children ever did.

My dad’s old financial records.  He has been dead since 2008.

Stacks of old mail that belonged to that same dad.

Really ugly paintings from an art class I took six years ago.

Many small stuffed Santas, elves and reindeer given to my children when they were little and unused in Christmas decorating for at least ten years.

Eighteen-year-old cassette tapes of children’s stories.

Flower vase from a floral delivery twenty-seven years ago.

Muffin tins.  I never bake muffins.

The frying pan I never use because it’s too heavy to pick up with one hand.

Research related to my natural health practice, a failed business from twelve years ago.

Financial Applications for Student Aid from the kids’ college days.

Copies of applications for every college they applied to.

X-rays of my head after a 2005 collision with a horse.

Four dead cell phones.

A small dog bowl used by the dog who died in 2005.

At least two hundred fifty blank envelopes left over from boxes of stationery and Christmas cards.

Felt and foam squares purchased for elementary school projects.

Ditto for a bag of tongue depressors and popsicle sticks.

Flashlights with battery compartments that can’t be opened because of corrosion.

Empty shoe boxes.

Old church bulletins.

Empty binders.

Wooden pencils with rotten erasers.

Dry erase markers.  Haven’t owned a dry erase board in years.

Old dog treats that upset the dog’s stomach two years ago.

Unsavory spices, some of which were twenty years old.

Paperwork from my 1982 divorce.

The marriage certificate from the 1977 marriage that preceded the divorce.

Smelly candles.

Evaluations from the career I gave up in 1987, after becoming a mom.

Graduation cap and gown from my daughter’s 2007 high school graduation which she declined to attend.

Macrame necklaces I made at a hippie bead shop in 1973.