Save It

StorQuest Self Storage

Save it! It's valuable! has been my sarcastic response any time there is a question about whether we should save some bit of paper that the has potential to be valuable, like receipts, instruction manuals or warranty cards. Problem with that approach is you end up with a heap of papers, most of which are absolutely worthless. Taking the time to evaluate whether a piece of paper really has any value requires thinking, and thinking about stuff that doesn't interest you is work. So the piece of paper gets added to the heap.

I suspect that saving stuff is a common affliction. Just look at the proliferation of storage lockers. These things are turning into giant compounds. I have enough stuff that renting a storage locker and moving some of that stuff into it would give me a little more room in my house. But you know what would happen: I would just accumulate more stuff and pretty soon I would be back to thinking I could use a little more storage space. However, I have a severe dislike for paying rent. It's bad enough paying property taxes, but at least I get something for them. 

The problem I have is that I am an American and stuff accumulates. In order to avoid becoming a hoarder, you have to diligently and repeatedly purge your house of excess stuff. What a pain. The alternative is dying a tabloid worthy death when a pile of papers (valuable! Save it!) topples over on top of you and you suffocate. 

My wife and I both work pretty diligently at getting rid of stuff we don't use. I have half a dozen items that I think might we worth enough to make posting them on Ebay worthwhile, but they've been sitting there for at least a month and I haven't made a single move in that direction. I might make enough to pay for lunch for a week, so I should do it. Of course, the longer I wait, the higher the price will go (because of inflation), but any dollars I do get will also be worth less (because of inflation), so that's basically a wash. More likely the stuff will be worth less because it is getting older by the day.

Then I got a notice from Google that my Google Drive was 3/4 full, and would I like to rent some more space? No thank you, but Google gives you 15 gigabytes. What all have I stored in there that's taking up ten gigabytes of space? So I started taking a look. I've been dumping files in there for 15 years, and there are a bunch. There are hundreds of rinky dink little spreadsheets, but these are only a few kilobytes each. There are some documents, maybe hundreds, but still, only a few kilobytes each. I suspect I started storing photos there. I probably ought to hook up my big hard drive and work on getting all my photos loaded onto it.

If I turn my head I can see my bookcase. It's mostly been taken over with medicine and stuff. There is only a handful of books and maybe one shelf's worth of 3 ring notebooks. My first desk when we moved to Oregon was a big old Steelcase unit I bought used. It had three file drawers, and I filled them with valuable papers. But I eventually found (like after 20 years) that I was only using a small subsection of one drawer. The rest were just sitting there, turning to dust. Something happened that caused a major reorganization and the Steelcase desk was replaced by a spare, wood veneer table from somewhere, Dania maybe? So a bunch of paper went to the recycler and a bunch went in the shredder. That was a pain. I remember that - sitting there patiently feeding a thousand sheets of paper into the shredder two or three at a time. The shredder earned it's pay that day.

Anyway, I probably ought to look in those notebooks. Most haven't been opened for years.