Everywhere you turn today, someone is ready to give you advice. That’s how new year’s begin. It is an almost inherent ritual that we take a measure of ourselves. We make promises and pledges and feel uplifted with a clean slate. We can start anew.

Projects are an obvious form of the ritual. I doubt if the Container Store or Staples would even exist if there were not organizing rituals that get kicked into high gear at the new year. Somehow both stores make you feel guilty if you haven’t thought about reorganizing your life, yourself.

There are projects that have a beginning and an ending, and then there are my projects. They just go on and on and on. I mean the concept of throwing out items. It is an ongoing lifestyle project that creeps to the top of my “to do” list on a regular basis. The problem is quite simple. It cannot be solved, completed, finished, ended–you supply the word.

No matter how much mail I open and shred, the postman seems to think I want to see his next delivery. I cannot get ahead of the pile of solicitations, invoices, or just plain old junk. I shred. It helps. It just doesn’t end. I actually think I love the endless little bits of shredded paper.

Clothes. That’s another winner. I recognize I will never wear half of my possessions and that closet clean-outs are healthy and therapeutic. Yet no matter how much I give away to the various collection drives, I still am left with way too many items.

Papers or articles. Even with the instant touch of the Internet, I still clip, cut, and save paper and articles. I have folders for folders, some going back so many years that now they could be called” decades-old info”. That’s a scary thought.

So here we are, ready to promise ourselves we will get it together. Organize, throw out, and eliminate. It’s a simple enough pledge but an almost impossible concept to fulfill.

Now here’s a project we can do: Make no lists. Now we’re finished. Got you Staples. Coffee cures.