It seemed important at the time

3/14/10 Dozens of old files and documents, recycled

On Friday, as I was talking to my accountant -- I've always wanted to be able to say that -- I needed to look back at an old tax return. Organized bloke that I am, I pulled down the huge plastic tub, stored on the top shelf of the closest in our guest bedroom, where my past tax returns are stored.

After finding the information that I needed, I was confronted by the fact that my tax documents occupied a very small percentage of this storage bin. The vast majority of the bin was taken up by two black file cases. Could the contents be downsized?

This evening I returned to the guest bedroom to open up and examine the above mentioned file cases. Now, Dear Reader, you may be asking yourself, "What percentage of the priceless documents contained in these cases and meticulously cataloged, labeled, and saved by Reed, could now be safely discarded?"

Ah, I was asking myself the same question.

The answer was a bit surprising: 100%. That's right: I recycled every single piece of paper in both cases. There wasn't a single scrap of pulp that was important enough to survive tonight's downsize.

Which brings me to this conclusion: either time quickly renders irrelevant things which were once vitally important, or I do a poor job of decided what to save in the first place.

If the second is true, I need to rapidly get that under control or I'm setting myself up for time-wasting downsizes years into the future.