I’m a filer. I file many things away in white plastic three-ring binders with shiny laminate covers. I love the sound—that self-assured click-CLICK—of the rings opening and closing before and after something’s been filed away. Sssssatisfying.

I’m an over-filer. I have shit dating back to 2004, when I got in my blue Toyota Corolla with my parents behind me in a U-Haul, careening down Interstate 25 on our way to a teensy-tiny California town for my first real job. We weaved through and out of small western populations, drying up and decaying. Towns with little life other than gas stations, where we’d stop to fill up but only so we could leave.

I’m an over-filer of mostly boring stuff. Car insurance renewal policies in manila envelopes that I never bothered to open. Pay stubs. (Pay stubs.) Newspaper clippings, yellowed and musty from my journalism days. Magazine articles my dad mailed over the years about things like health, fitness, nutrition.

I’m an over-filer of mostly boring stuff, but also stuff that matters. My son’s careful crayon drawings from his preschool days. Mother’s Day artwork of tissue-paper flowers and a pipe-cleaner sun. Birthday cards from my grandparents, decades ago. Letters I’ve typed, printed, signed, never sent.

I plan to burn the boring stuff in a glorious backyard fire pit blaze this weekend. I refuse to continue allowing useless paper to take up space in the back of a closet, untouched and dead. I’ll watch the pages curl and blacken, remembering the bosses, friends, fears, victories from all that life.

Some things never change. And some things do.