Short post, maybe

One lesson from retirement, and also from cleaning up the place when my parents-in-law's house was put up for sale:

Don't keep anything you don't need! Or, to put it another way, some of us keep too much stuff. Or, yet another way: when in doubt, throw it out.

Several of us went through my parents-in-law's house, deciding what to try to sell, what to keep for someone, and what to throw away. A niece and I spent a few hours going through every paid bill in their married history. We found some gems, such as a receipt for wedding jewelry, and a contract on the house, but seven trash bags of receipts weren't of any value. Sooner or later, someone will lose or throw away even the items we kept. My wife and I have decided that, as far as possible, we will throw away the useless stuff in advance, so our kids don't have to. Then they can throw away what we thought was worth keeping.

We live in this world for a short time. We can't take anything with us till the next.

* * * * *

On an entirely different note, a daughter commented on this post, about assembly lines: "[I] would argue that it is actually a type of management and in this particular case it is a type of management that leads to exploitation of the worker. . . . assembly lines lead to a deskilling of labor. they not only lead to the laborer being disconnected from his product . . . but they also lead to deskilled labor, which is a way for management to pay lower wages and get away with it."

(reposted, with some improvements in wording on the first part)