Today is National Clean Out Your Closet Day. OK, I just made that up, but it might be just what our country needs right now.
I’m not a hoarder. Having one too many items on my kitchen counter makes my throat close up. Still, my possessions have a tendency to accumulate over time. You know how it goes. Things are on sale. Things are cute. Pretty soon you find your closets choked with items that have outlived their usefulness. It’s one of the things that holds me back from ever selling my house. How many long, long Saturdays would it take for me to sort out the chaff and box up the rest?
And so, for my own mental health, I have once again set about cleaning out my closets. Let me say up front that I do not expect to find any classified documents. The last set of papers I was handed containing anything remotely secret was the ballot from my kindergarten class mock presidential election back in 1996, and I just threw those away. Perhaps I should have shredded them, but I reasoned the damage that might have been incurred if the vote had gone public was minimal.
Now, journals I shred. I find it very cathartic to write things out, especially when I am heated up about something, but once the issue is resolved, releasing my rants out into the ether would only be hurtful and there’s no need for that. As a preschool friend once said, “S’over.”
I wonder if the same principle couldn’t be applied to all these classified documents that seem to be inconveniently popping up in closets and garages around the country. I don’t know under what circumstances they arrived at the homes in the first place, but given the number of assistants that these public figures must have, wouldn’t you think one of them would have been assigned the task of going through the closets on a routine basis?
And once located, would it not have been prudent to determine if the documents were still needed? Did they refer to issues that were active in some way, or did they say things like, “Today, I think I saw Nikita Krushchev light up a cigar in front of his residence. Is this a signal of some kind?”
Even if they involved issues that were important at the time, has that time passed? How many times in the future is it going to be necessary to refer to these papers? Are we holding on to them because we just don’t know what to do with them?
The ones I really feel sorry for are the National Archive people. Apparently, whatever is unearthed will get shuffled to them unfiltered. I can’t imagine what their closets look like.
I know some documents are national treasures, but I can’t help but think that others are national trash. Let that stuff go. Clean out the closets. When I’m done with my own, I’d be happy to help. I’m not qualified to determine which documents should stay and what should go, but I can run a shredder with the best of them.
Nah. Who am I kidding? I might be just the person they need, a woman with a clear eye who has culled the artwork and spelling papers my children brought home since preschool, fearlessly tossed photographs and letters whose meaning had faded. I could do it.
National Clean Out Your Closet Day. It’s a great opportunity for our nation to move forward with a clearer head. Cull, shred, send it for recycling. S’over.
