Spring Cleaning Fairy Tale
|Thoughts of spring cleaning can be as entrancing as a fairy tale — think of Snow White twirling around, sweeping with her broom, surrounded by fluttering birds and forest animals.
But, please notice that all of Snow White’s male sidekicks — Grumpy, Dopey, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, etc. — are not helping, conspicuously absent. And now that we’re back in the real-world, I’ll focus on a short-list of 2017 Spring Cleaning tasks that I want/need to accomplish:
—- Go through all my 2016 paperwork/bills/receipts/check-stubs, etc., get my taxes done, shred/toss all unneeded docs, and clear the decks for make room for the oncoming 2017 paperwork pile-up.
—- Complete a project started over a year ago, to purge the boxes of correspondence that I’ve been saving since the 1960’s(!), tossing out as much as possible. Unfortunately, I feel obliged to read through everything one more time — otherwise, what was the point of shlepping this stuff through a multitude of geographic moves?? I’d made substantial progress over a period of months, and it was delightful to revisit experiences of my adolescence and young adulthood (much of which had been completely forgotten); but then utter boredom set in, and the project stalled-out and has been on hold for quite awhile now. It’s time to get back to it and complete the purge.
—- I’ve also got a treasure trove of old magazine articles, pamphlets, vacation memorabilia, recipes, and other reading material that I meticulously filed in folders over the past several decades. At this point, most of this stuff can be classified as outdated and worthless. But, it all has to be reviewed in case there really was a reason that I was saving it all these years. I’m hopeful that the stack, measuring well over a foot, can be reduced to one or two slim folders.
The chances of actually finishing these tasks are about 0% because I know I’ll never be completely free of clutter. Neverthless, I’m hoping that my 2017 Spring Cleaning will have a fairy-tale ending, leaving me happily-ever-after.