The stuff that keeps us.

In my pantry I keep bags and containers of dried food, shelf after shelf of things that I will use one day. All  can be easily picked up  at the supermarket. An entire room with shelves like this one!

I have closets full of boxes with important papers, and more papers hidden in back drawers, piled under underwear, usurping space, keeping me busy year after year, when guests arrive and I need those closets for other uses. I'm constantly reminded of our modern obsessions.

I have papers I have written; and papers others have written, from people I will never meet, from people whose sole pursuit is to create trails of evidence, to point out that whatever goes wrong in life is not their fault.

Did you know the amount of insurance you bought in your youth, regardless of how much you paid, and for how long, that amount diminishes with age? At my present age, (forget those insurance claims that you can get guaranteed insurance at any age!) a onehundredfiftythousand life insurance is worth a meagerly onethousand dollars!

I was cleaning up a drawer, and there I saw the fine print, the print that was not sympathetic to my situation any more. Nobody can buy a cemetery plot for that amount, I thought.

What to do with all your stuff? Store if you have storage room. Let the supermarket store your dry goods. Just buy what you need when you need it, and keep your pantry shelves clean and bare. You are not going to go hungry these days.

Better yet, convert your pantry space to an artistic pursuit!

And for papers?
Read and shred. Feed your compost pile. If you want to keep them because you anticipate collecting benefits, be sure you read the small print, on some tiny line somewhere at the end of the document.