the filing cabinet traveler

I have in my office the ugliest 4-drawer filing cabinet still extant. I bought it from the (very) used office furniture barn on the campus when I was still working at the Big U. It's green, metal, and something that, these days, wouldn't even be allowed into an office. But it has served me well as the depository of all my paper ephemera such as old letters, clippings from here and there, accumulated writings from over the years, bank records, car histories, correspondence I have kept for who-knows-why. There is one drawer that has been dedicated to all things travel; maps, articles, photos, post cards, and clippings from newspapers and magazines all neatly organized by country. Remember when the San Francisco Chronicle had a "Follow the Reader" article in each Sunday's Travel section? Hundreds of clippings from it. However, I need an extra drawer in the cabinet to hold all the business from my sister's trust, so I decided it was time to clean out the travel folders. Wow! What a bonanza of memories. And what a lot of trash, too. I went through every piece of paper in each folder and either logged on to a web site for that particular item ~ hotel, restaurant, freight line, train line, etc., ~ and bookmarked those things for future use, reread the articles to see if I wanted to keep them, tossed reams of paper, and generally cleaned up and out. I got rid of Bali, Belize, Caribbean, cruises, Egypt, Germany, Guadaloupe, Dominica, Libya, Spain, Tunisia and Turkey. The files now fit in one half of a drawer, making room for the bulging map file ~ I hate to throw away maps. All in a day's work.

Tomorrow I move on to the "General Files" drawer. Another ton of paper will leave the premises.