Shreddings

Every day Yrs Trly shreds acres and acres of paper.
Yesterday I shredded perhaps 40 pieces; 8&1/2 by 11 printing-paper, envelopes, etc.
Why are all business printouts on 8&1/2 by 11 paper, even appointments?
Anything with my name and address gets shredded, like magazine and catalog covers.
I used to send postage-paid envelopes back, like credit-card solicitations.
But then I noticed they had some kind of tracking-code, so now they get shredded.
The shreddings get recycled. I bag ‘em in big plastic trash-bags, and my trash-guys pick ‘em up for recycling.
(My trash is collected by a private company.)
I used to put ‘em in paper grocery-bags, but one blew out of my blue-box, and deposited shreddings all over my lawn.
So perhaps my Marcal “Small-Steps” tissues have some of my shreddings. “Small-Steps” paper-products are made from recycled paper.
It used to be one bag every two weeks. But now I’m shredding so much I can fill a bag in one week.
A lot of it is junk-mail. I shred a lot of it, but if I can put it in my magazine-recycling, it doesn’t get shredded.
I set out a bag just this week, but it looks like I’ll hafta do another the next time the trash-guys visit.
I have a slew of Christmas-cards to shred.
Now that I’m alone I feel swamped.
The laundry-guy is me, the bed-maker is me, I cook my own supper, I bake muffins.
But it feels like the deluge of paper is getting out-of-hand.
Processing mail used to take five minutes. Yesterday was at least a half-hour, and I still have stuff to put away.
Often I have to let the mail sit unopened.
Yesterday I was bewailing “so much junk!”

• My wife died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.