It is time to do a serious declutter

Get rid of things we no longer use

Discard things we no longer need

Let go of things we no longer want

I am in my home office going through old papers

Its a no brainer to throw away really old documents

But I still have to look at every page

Decide if it can be simply thrown away

Or put it aside for secure shredding

Some things I must surely keep though

It becomes a monotonous routine of look and sort

Then all of a sudden something special happens

I read a document that I have kept for over 25 years

Memories start flooding back uncontrollably

I am transported to a different place and time

I can see the faces and hear the voices from back then

Reliving those events through a vivid movie in my mind

That document goes into the keep pile

I stumble upon a bunch of external drives

Cryptic labels tell me they contain photos

Without any specifics of what they might be

I hurriedly plug one of them into the laptop

Its an electronic time capsule waiting to be opened

A few clicks and the drive reveals its contents

Discovering images from decades ago

Some of them are scanned versions of very old family photographs 

I am plunged back well into the last century

Each click reveals more forgotten images

Its a welcome break from sifting through old papers

I reflect upon all the things I have done in my lifetime

Places I have been and people I have interacted with

I realize that many of my memories have been put into cold storage

It only takes a few pieces of paper and some photos to extract them

I decide to be prudent in what I throw away from now on

Not that these things are of any real sentimental value

They are however the keys to unlock special memories

Keys that cannot be reproduced if lost

I am going to safeguard those keys for the rest of my life