Life, the Universe, and Everything

One of my de-cluttering goals for this year is to work my way through the boxes of professional journals and magazines I’ve saved because “there’s an article I want to read.” Some of these boxes go back to 2001! (I’m not going to mention the 1984 box with Year 1 of MacWorld. No. Not going to talk about that. Stop asking.) For each magazine issue, I decide whether

1. the article is no longer interesting. In that case, the issue immediately goes in the recycle bin.
2. the article is still interesting, but not potentially useful. If the article isn’t fodder for an article or blog post of my own, I read it immediately and recycle the whole issue.
3. the article will be useful for something I want to write. If so, I clip and file it, and recycle the rest of the magazine.

So far, most of the articles are still interesting, so it’s taking longer than I expected to get through the pile of boxes. A few of these articles may end up mentioned in short blog posts, under the tag “OldReads,” but only about 10% of the articles are still useful for longer articles I plan to write—my writing goals have changed a lot in the last few years—so I’m not adding much to my overflowing file cabinets. Even the more personal stuff (travel destinations, etc.) is less likely to wind up in a file drawer these days, since I’m no longer in proper physical condition for whitewater rafting, hiking the Andes, or crawling through extensive cave systems.

All in all, my de-cluttering progress is steady, if slower than I’d like.