There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
Oscar Wilde
Wilde sure got that right. I’ve always felt that way, particularly about financial documents and receipts, which experts warn must be carefully disposed of. As a consequence, there were years during which I kept all my documents and receipts. I mean literally every single one, including the trivial ones, rather than figure out the best way to get rid of them. They were all sitting in a box that was taking up too much space in my home, so finally I started looking through them and disposing of them individually. I found all sorts of interesting things among them, including . . .
- The receipt for my piano. OMG, I spent more on it than I had remembered!
- The contract for my wedding photographer.
- ATM receipts from England.
- A Columbia House bill. I bought so many CDs from Columbia House back in the day. It was stupid at the time, given how little money I had, but it left me with a great CD collection.
- A 2005 packing slip from Miles Kimball for extra apple peeler blades that I probably still haven’t used, though I still have the peeler.
- A check register for Dime Bank. I have fond memories of the old Dime Bank near my parents’ house. It’s where I got my first savings account as a child, and I had a checking account there when I first got out of college. It was bought out by a series of larger banks, though, and who knows what the bank name is now.
- A spending receipt from one of the cruises we took. It’s all bar drinks and bingo.
- An envelope from the business in VA where my hubby used to work.
- Printouts from the eBay auctions in which I bought my antique glass candy containers. I can see now exactly how much I paid for each one. They haven’t increased in value and in some cases may even have decreased. That’s probably because they originated in the 1920s-1940s, and there are fewer people now who would find them nostalgic. Oh, well. I still think they’re cool, especially Willys Jeep.
- The vet bill from when my cat Zoulie jumped off the deck and broke her toe.
- A receipt from the big Yankee Candle store in South Deerfield, MA, which my mom and I used to visit annually near Christmastime. Good memories.
It was fun finding all those things. But, some of the receipts had become sparkly. That’s not a good thing. Apparently it happens to some receipts when they get old, and ideally one ought not to touch them. I started wearing gloves to handle the stuff in the box, but eventually I wondered if I ought to handle any of it at all, let alone shred it. So, ultimately I shoved the remainder back into the box to be disposed of in an alternative way. However, I did get rid of a lot of stuff, and I feel like I accomplished something while also taking a fun little trip down memory lane.