BillandBob.com

I’m pleased! About a week ago, I recovered from feeling ooky and tired all the time to simply feeling tired all the time. Feeling ooky was a recipe for lots of lying around feeling ooky. But simple tiredness can be pushed past, at least sometimes, so that I can Get some Things Done. It’s good to feel semi-functional again!

Mostly I’ve used my newly regained oomph to help with daily chores (dishes, laundry) and catch up on work (craft a presentation, meet with the Houston Chronicle‘s Editorial Board). But my friend Susan, whose twin boys are now 9, reminded me that my days of feeling more productive will be short-lived. She urged me to start working early and often on getting our house ready for babies.

Our little bungalow only has 2 bedrooms (that is, 1 bedroom and 1 office). With both of us working a lot of long hours (and previously traveling a lot), we have tended to accumulate clutter. Not wanting to raise babies in the midst of boxes, this pregnancy has given me an urgent desire to purge, purge, purge. I didn’t manage any of that the last eight weeks, which was very frustrating, but now it’s time.

So on Saturday, I pulled out a box labeled “top drawer file cabinet” and opened it to see what was inside, feeling optimistic that it would be old papers we can live without. Here’s some of what I found:

• notes from my high school AP biology class and papers from my college humanities class
• my application to and acceptance letter from Rice U (I had wondered recently what I had put in “The Box”. Yes, it included reference to a certain famous Canadian power trio.)
• lease agreements and correspondence for my first apartment, which I rented for $395/month
• three years of phone and electric bills
• three years of credit card statements plus all of the corresponding transaction receipts

I’m certain that most of you have no trouble concluding correctly that nearly all of this should go promptly through the shredder and into a recycle bin. If I make an effort to focus on big picture contributions to our quality of life, I can come to the same conclusion, too.

But in the moment of going through the box, I get caught up in all the snapshot memories these documents bring back:

• my freshman year roommate (who called home to Atlanta from “my” phone), and how often she made me utterly nuts
• my first apartment, how it had several roof leaks, and how much I enjoyed entertaining friends in my own space for the first time
• shopping regularly at AppleTree, Brentano’s, Bookstop, Sound Warehouse, and other stores that don’t exist anymore
• late-night rock-n-bowl at Stadium Bowl down off the then-seedy section of Main Street
• restaurants I used to frequent, like Two Pesos, Bennigan’s, Marco’s, Olive Garden, Pizzeria Uno, and House of Pies; and more importantly, the friends I used to go to those places with

After pawing through the box for two hours, shredding some things and pondering others, I told Bill that purging these things felt emotionally difficult because of all the memories they conjured. He encouraged me to find and focus on better “primary” source materials to remember my college days, or at least, just make some notes about the memories I want to hold onto.

Is it a box of clutter or memories?

So here I am. This captures enough to let go of all those old bills and statements, and into the shredder they go. Maybe tomorrow I’ll find some more clarity about old class papers and lecture notes. In the meantime, I’m curious whether you saved old school papers and more importantly, how you thought through the decision.