My latest column is up at Project Simplify:

The Not-So-Simple Life: Turning Mountains Into Molehills

by Lance Brown

Do you have your electricity bills from 15 years ago? You don’t? No, of course you don’t. Why would you?

The more appropriate question, though, is probably: “Why would I?” Because up until a week ago, I did.

As a matter of fact, it turns out I probably had most of my electric bills from the past 15 years. At least it seemed that way. Quite a few phone bills too. And car insurance bills. All gathering in stupid boxes over the years, for reasons which seem less clear with each day that passes.

Okay, it’s true, I’m overstating things a bit for effect here. The boxes weren’t actually stupid; boxes don’t really have a measurable intelligence that we know of. The rest, though, is the bizarre and somewhat sad truth. paperpile

I warned you all the way back in my first column that I used to border on being a hoarder right out of one of those reality TV  shows, and I wasn’t kidding. I’ve been allowing myself to be chased and haunted by what I’ve collectively labeled “my papers” since college. And while a percentage of my growing “archives” (and whatever the term for stupid boxes of old bills is) has always been meaningful and worthwhile, that portion has had to compete with the weightier and more distracting abundance of things that were being toted around simply because they weren’t being dealt with at all. (Which is the only way I can explain how I accrued a box filled with a decade-plus worth of old utility bills—and moved it to a new home, twice.)

Now the good news: I no longer have possession of any phone or electric bills from the previous century.

Read the rest at Project Simplify.

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Photo credit:
papers by fsse8info