Last week, I sold my wonderful film camera, a Minolta SRT 101, a gift from my dad for high school graduation in 1972. Ever since I bought a digital Canon in 2004, the Minolta has been idle. It was time to share its ability to continually take gorgeous photos.
I packaged up my old friend with love, bubble wrap and a bit of remorse, but, being practical, I knew it didn’t make sense to keep it. I said farewell at the post office and got on with my life.
When I woke up Sunday morning, I was thinking about the Minolta, hoping its new owner would appreciate the quality of its photos. Suddenly, it dawned on me I had not sent the owner’s manual! As I brewed my coffee, I shot an email to the woman who bought it and told her I’d look for it and drop it in the mail on Monday.
I had not looked at that manual for years, and over time, it had been shuffled from one place to another and another as I repeatedly tried to organize my life. I did some remodeling on my house in the last few years, and, more than once, I had to pack everything up in boxes, stack them out of the way covered in plastic to keep out sawdust.
The beauty of this is that, in moving things back to their places, I cleaned out! I burned a lot of paper trash, took a lot of things to the freebox, and sold or donated many books and magazines. What was left was put into yet another ‘filing’ system, and within this new system was the Minolta owner’s manual.
I spent a good part of Sunday morning going through boxes and drawers to find it, which I eventually did. In that search, though, I inadvertently began my spring cleaning. More paper trash went into the woodstove, the pile for the freebox got larger, and dusty cardboard boxes went into the recycling pile.
I also cleaned out some dubious drawers, where I found:
> A stack of various, unused Christmas cards. I put the cards in with my holiday wrapping materials. I’ll cut them up and use them as gift cards. I’ll save the envelopes for the one check I write every month to the man who collects my trash. I’m good for over a year!
> A box of unused (ahem) floppy disks.
> Course-work from a semester long writing workshop in 2000.
> A Microsoft security update CD from 2004.
> The owner’s manual to one of my daughter’s bicycles that she outgrew five years ago.
> A 2003 receipt book for landscaping that belongs to someone I worked for!
> Two pairs of really old glasses that I will donate to the Lions Club.
> A letter I’d lost from one of my closest high school friends, Perky, from 2004. I’m glad I found her on Facebook, because I couldn’t write her back!
Sheesh. Even when you think you own very little and that what you do have, you use, think again. Not so! What’s in your drawers? Go through them, and see what’s of no use anymore. Simplify, organize what’s left, and I bet you will have freed up quite a bit of space! But, please don’t fill it up with more stuff! Reorganize! Downsize! Simplify!
- This One's for Realtors® - Or the Ups and Downs of Selling Your Home
- The Drawbacks of Angled Windows in Passive Solar Building
