It was really odd how I felt emotionally attached to many of my papers. Kondo says that "papers never spark joy," but I found that not to be true for me. I found myself smiling and reminiscing at the little post-it where I wrote what we bought at the NC State Fair (thanks Brian for buying our fried oreos), receipts from the Chattanooga Aquarium, Chick-fil-a, even Walmart! Granted, most of the papers I found myself reminiscing about were from our time in the US last fall, so I guess I should cut myself a little slack. But I have pictures from all our travels, which are much better than a receipt, so I threw them away (with a little sigh of remembrance). There were also a lot of things that I have no idea why I kept them this long, like the entire manual from our temporary car insurance in the US (why in the world did I waste suitcase space and weight to carry that back here?) and privacy policies to things. I enjoyed ripping those up.
As I said in my previous paper post, I didn't shred silly things like McDonald's receipts, but I did have a lot of documents (bills, etc.) with our name and address. I gave up on the scissors pretty quickly because they were starting to rub my thumb and tore almost all the papers by hand. I think there was something therapeutic about actually ripping up so many papers. I scanned some to keep only electronically, and I saved a few important documents (tax docs, etc.), but I threw away a lot. I kept the papers from 2015 in the expandable folder they were already in. I'll deal with them next January. For now, it's hard to believe that I actually finished decluttering all those papers! :)
Next up is our "junk" shelf, which holds things like our toolbox, lightbulbs, string, tape measures, nails, screws, and who knows what else! But for now, I'm relaxing and relishing being finished with paper. :)
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