If You Haven't Used It In The Last Five Years - Dump It

Earlier this week I mentioned I had twenty-six bosses in forty years. With each new boss comes a different office space. So I need to move to another area to accommodate this latest transition. In preparation for this change, I decided to clear out the file cabinets of stuff that has accumulated over the last almost nine years. In keeping with the mindset we used to consider what to keep and what to dump when we moved here from Milwaukee, I decided if I had not used it within the last five years it had to go. Most of the stuff was easy to trash, but some of the reports and samples of work I brought with me from my health care career were harder to part with. They landed in a separate pile. They represented a huge chunk of my professional career of which I am most proud. So I took a few photos and remembered I still had my portfolio. Then I thought about my general philosophy and they ended up on the dump pile. I suppose everyone goes through this. But this time feels so final.