After taking a walk this morning, a friend and I were sitting on a bench outside a woodland cafe enjoying our hot drinks when she mentioned that she needed to clean out her garage and get rid of boxes and boxes of paper, including old tax documents.

“Paper,” I shouted, startling the sparrow pecking the ground around us. “Shredding. Today is the county’s paper shredding day at the high school. It closes at noon. What time is it?”

It was 10:45, and though the announcement said the service would be available until noon, it warned that it would close sooner if the site received all the paper it could handle before then.

I rushed home and alerted my husband that today was the day to get rid of bags full of old bank and credit card statements, and medical records. Earlier, I’d planned to lump this with another exciting adventure for the same day, namely, moving bags of old clothing, kitchen utensils and other items to a nearby thrift store. I touted it as two garage cleanups for the price of one trip. If you saw the garage you might question how removing a few sacks could be called a cleanup; still, every little effort counts. Admittedly, at our present rate of cleanups, the garage might need a bit more time, say, three years.

As we rushed to the high school and drove around the front parking lot, I wondered why there was nothing pointing us to the spot. It’s a big school with multiple entrances. Surely, the county would have prepared bold signage.

As we cruised the empty parking lot, my husband said, “This is Friday. Are you sure that’s when the shredder was coming?”

I greeted him with silence. What could I possiblly add to that? Of course, the event was scheduled for Saturday. I had a good excuse for the mistake, aside from possible dementia, because I usually walk with this friend on Saturdays.

But the whole event did set me thinking about all that we accumulate in the days and years of our lives, just bringing one or two non-perishable items at a time into the house for months, then weeks, then years. A few days ago, I went searching in a cupboard for a vase for flowers I’d brought home from the farmer’s market, I thought back to many years earlier when a friend and I used to comb through thrift shops across two counties looking for interesting vases for flower arrangements. Not that long ago, I gave away at least half of my vase collection. So why do I still have twenty-one left?

The Google AI says, “On average, an American household contains an estimated 300,000 items, according to the LA Times. This is despite the fact that many Americans have homes with more space than previous generations, with the average home size nearly tripling in the last 50 years.”

It looks like those of us in the senior age range have to do more than drop off a few pieces of clothing or cookware at the thrift shop every year or so. If we only want to get rid of half our stuff in a year, we’d have to find homes for two thousand eight hundred seventy items a week, more if you consider Friday and Saturday as one day.