Gratitude Monday -- Out With The Old

I'm so grateful I've finally gotten around to throwing away documents and whatnot that I no longer need. Some of those papers I haven't needed in 30 years.
A few weeks ago I went through several containers to see what I no longer needed. I don't know why I hadn't done it earlier, and neither do I know what prompted me to finally get at it.
The important thing is I did it.
I had four grocery bags of old taxes, cards, and in one stellar example, all my hard copy book rejections.
Sending off birthday and Christmas cards to recycling can be difficult, but rejections?
Yeah, they were tough, too, but they absolutely had to go.
Keeping around nearly 170 examples of my failure serves no one, least of all me. I don't need a piece of paper to remind me a book did not come out.
In other glorious examples I found my camera insurance from 1985. It cost me $50 a year. Car insurance from the same era was $199.
I had tax returns and gas receipts from the eighties taking up space in my house and by extension, in my life.
They are shredded and ready to take away to recycling.
And finally, 14 years after leaving the newspaper, I disposed of my notebooks. I'd been meaning to do it for several years and never got to it.
Yesterday I did.
The emotional impact of getting rid of the papers and the energy they held from the era of their use hasn't settled on me yet.
I expect I need a bit of time and so I will wait, but for now I have room in my home.
The old is out. That means there's room for the new, and for this change I am grateful.