She won't. Arson is illegal and she should want to make some money on her investment.
Every couple of weeks, I donate another pickup load to the Habitat for Humanity. I take another box to the library. The last trip I took a file cabinet, a kitchen island, two outdoor chairs, and a box of glassware.
The file cabinet was a Saturday project by itself, because I had to empty it. Its contents were a freakish and undesired time warp of the last 12 years of my life. Things that are now shredded and in the recycling bin include:
1993: 6 love letters from high school boyfriend; I did not reread them.
1993: Parts of a high school journal that depict loving tales of the high school boyfriend, who--in the end--left me for a much thinner girl named Rebecca.
1994: Speech from high school graduation. So. Sappy.
1995: Tax return. How did I live on $7564.00?
1996: Job offer letter from my first engineering internship. I was paid a huge $11 an hour, which allowed me to buy food every day.
1994-1998: Perkins loan promissary notes with a wide variety of addresses depicting how much I moved as an undergrad, always trying to find a cheaper place to live. These also included repeated threats from the government about what might happen if I didn't repay my loan.
1997: The first letter I ever wrote to two boyfriends ago.
1998: Sallie Mae coupons from my student loans that, 10 years later, are still unpaid and living in magic deferral land.
1998: Photograph from two boyfriends ago.
1999: First mortgage, including all the payment coupons.
1999: Sticker from the 1999 Jetta: my first and last new car.
2000: Receipt and limited warranty for my Natuzzi leather couch.
My 2-drawer vertical file cabinet has been reduced to a small Rubbermaid office solution. There's a lot more to reduce before I head west, but I'm happily making dents every week.
3 comments:
Good job on the downsizing! I'm trying to do the same to only a small degree of success.
Ah! I love purging AND moving! Good for you!
Ah yes the Sallie Mae paperwork. I recently tossed mine too.
As for the old girlfriend stuff, I had a little burning ritual rereading the letters and tossing them into a fireplace. So cleansing. I think I kept loveletters from the 80s and 90s in case I forgot that I had past relationships. Or perhaps so that when I did finally reread them and burn them that I would endure the added torture of reading how bad I was at relationships.
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