The KonMari subcategory called ‘valuables’ includes things like credit cards, passports, and money.

Here’s a category where I obviously haven’t been vigilant, despite going through it periodically as we have moved. I found a credit card which expired in 2010!

It’s also a category where, previously, I have kept things on technicalities or out of obligation, when upon investigation I now discover that I didn’t want those items.

I had, for example, a few store cards for supermarkets I now never go to, or specialty shops where I have been so seldom that I never racked up enough points for the card to be worth the bother of keeping.

I have many library cards, in fact five cities’ worth of public library cards. At one time, I daydreamed about making a framed display of them, as a museum-type snapshot of the geography of my life, as it were. But sorting through the cards now, all I felt was, I’m just so over that. I’m over the idea of spending time just to preserve such ephemera, and over the need to document my past in that way. I know where I’ve lived. I have pictures to prove it and can tell stories about each place.

This process is supposed to yield such changes in perspective. And I am finding that it does. I’m also finding that my mindset is changing, without the need for extended dialogues with myself or others. In the past, I think I would have sat and explained to myself that I didn’t need to make a display of library cards, and why, and finally convinced myself reluctantly to let them go. Whereas this time, I just knew, without the need to rationalise or itemise my motivations.

The next subcategory is a big one: sewing and knitting supplies!