Steve, you did not actually get a raise for "saving the day", did you?

I have packrat tendencies. Indeed, I still have a shrink-wrapped copy of Win 3.1, DOS 6 something, and other thinks both hardware and software, small and great. And office furniture... and office supplies... and cables-a-plenty of nearly every type.

However, recently I have started to "clean house". I no longer see much value in keeping that stuff; I see only the space it takes from me year after year.

There has to be a sunset clause on stuff. 7 years seems long enough to me. If it is older than that, then legally, it would be hard to find fault with in a court of law.

The world will not stop spinning. There will be alternate routes of action and progress.

Not controversial? This is a touchy topic with some... especially when you start trying to throw away the trinkets saved for a decade or more.

Yeah, I still miss my old Atari 800 XL (on-board BASIC) with it's whopping 64kb RAM, with it's twin Indus GT 500 external 5 1/4 floppy drives that each weigh more than my laptop, and the 15 in. wide Star Gemini 15X Dot Matrx printer (still in use by some banking operations), and the 500 or so floppy disks of games and software of questionable ownership (before I understood and upheld copyright laws).

I miss these old relics almost as much as my first car, a Datsun 710 4D Sedan; orange. Yeah! It had been grandfathers' car. I last saw it in a heap-o-metal of a 4-car pile-up in the middle of an intersection, that I was blessed to walk away from. The back tire, still attached to the axle, was in the middle of the car, and the engine was still running until we yanked the ignition wires.

But it all now lives in the land of nostalgia. I'd rather have the bigger-better-faster, than the dust-collecting compendium of the past. The only trinket of the past I strive to maintain is the wisdom and lessons learned.