To Save or to Throw

A friend gave me her business card recently and said, "Send me an e-mail sometime." I went to my office and sent one off immediately before I lost the card in a pile of ever accumulating papers. I do throw some things out eventually but not until the fire marshal threatens to have me and my piles of paper hauled away.
Several years ago, I learned the principle of expected use. What that means is you look at an item and determine how likely it is that you will ever use it. It may be an actual physical item or something like an e-mail. Since I put this principle into practice, I am much better at sorting through e-mail.
I used to try to save everything on the possibility that I would use it for something someday. After moving all my "stuff" around several times and not finding any practical use for much of it, I decided to sell, give away, or throw away much of it. As I sorted through my papers from grade school through college that my Mother saved for me for posterity, I became less and less nostalgic and more and more practical. Then I started tossing all of it. Then I started tossing out the papers that I saved for my children thinking, "I'm saving them from having to do the same thing I'm doing." It was liberating to simplify my life and my next move. One hundred boxes of "stuff" became twenty, my treasures became someone else's junk, my load was lightened.
Of course as soon as I settled into my new home, I started accumulating new "stuff". It's time to purge again.