Month: January 2026

I am really fed up with the news.  Many years ago, we could dial in a news broadcast and actually learn about what was happening in our city, our country or the world.  Those days are long gone.  We still have shows that are called newscasts but they are really political casts.  Why do I want to waste a couple hours in the evening listening to conservatives drone on and on about how bad the liberals are or listen to the liberals tell me how horrendous the conservatives are?  Something happens and both sides pounce on the political implications and beat the story to death. 

Today a major league umpire called a game ending strike on the Detroit Tigers “clean up” hitter that was clearly out of the strike zone! This is a clear threat to our democracy.  This was not a bad call by Honest Abe Smith.  It was an intentional attack against Mighty Casey O’Toole who was once photographed wearing a retro 1960’s “Hubert Humphrey For President” button.

We have video evidence from 27,423 mobile phones of fans attending the game that definitely shows the pitch to possibly be low.  Further research finds that Smith has never been seen in a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream parlor.

The conservative station counters.

This is a sad day in America.  Major League umpire, Honest Abe Smith was viciously attacked for simply doing his job.  Abe has always “called them like he sees them”.  Any implication of bias in the game ending call in the Detroit Tiger contest is ludicrous.  This is a clear threat to the rule of law in our country.  Attacking the “American Pastime” is a slippery slope that could lead to anarchy and communism.  We have indisputable evidence from several thousand cell phones that the pitch was very likely in the strike zone. Smith, a brittle diabetic who never eats ice cream, has been selected to work the past three World Series events because of his incredible umpiring expertise….          

Both political casts then grind on for hours with interviews from expert witnesses supporting their respective political positions.  Why am I listening to this drivel?   

I simply cannot find any news outlet that does not restructure the events of the day to support their political agenda.  So I have decided to write my own news stories.  Sure, they are purely fictional.  However, they are stories that I would like to hear and they are no more fictional than the stuff I read and watch every day.  Here are a few of those stories.

Confirmed encounter with an alien spacecraft.

Today, 30 miles west of Bismark North Dakota we have the first, fully verifiable, encounter with a spacecraft from a planet outside of our solar system.  The visitors landed in an open field and set up for a great picnic lunch.  The leader of the alien team, Bob, invited North Dakotans to meet and greet session. 

Not surprisingly, the technologically advanced visitors had little problem overcoming the language differences.  It appears that the artificial intelligence of the extra terrestrials easily translated the entire discussion into very fluid English.  

Bob said that his planet has been sending visitors to our planet for thousands of years.  Recently their surveillance systems had noted a lot of chatter coming from the earth.  Earth scientists have verified that the visits are actually occurring.  This has led to a lot of speculation about the intentions of the aliens.  Much of the hypothesizing is really off base and he wanted to clear up any misunderstandings.  His group would be staying for four or five hours.  He welcomed film crews and news reporters to the discussions.  There would be a lengthy Q&A to answer any earthling concerns or questions.

Bob explained that his planet, Happy Place, is also located in our galaxy.  They have identified hundreds of thousands of fellow planets that support intelligent life.  The citizens of Happy Place are gregarious, curious, fun loving folks.  So for many years they have set up attractive vacations to a string of life supporting planets, including the planet earth.  Paying patrons are treated to great excursions to fifty or sixty destinations around the Milky Way.  The closest parallel to this, in earthly parlance, is river cruising. 

In the last few decades, earth has become a very popular destination, primarily because of Krispy Kremes.  Often, we keep the visits to varying planets very anonymous.  Trying to explain our presence to underdeveloped beings can cause more trauma than benefit.  Earth, however, has advanced to a point where they can absolutely document our visits.  It was time to explain the nature of these encounters for the safety and benefit of all parties.   

After four and a half hours of conversation and a massive DoorDash delivery from Krispy Kreme, Bob, and his clients departed for their next planetary destination.

Twelve year old invents the perfect fishing lure.

The middle school science project for Mary McDonald in Dothan Alabama was to create a better fishing lure.  Her research included extensive use of artificial intelligence to suggest what sounds, smells, and colors would be most attractive to fresh water bass.  After thirty or forty attempts she came up with the Lunker Lander. 

The lure has a mini circuit that emits both sounds and odors when you activate the device. On the first test in Eufaula Georgia, Mary attached the lure to her bass rod and flipped the on switch.  Before she could cast, three Florida Black Bass jumped into the boat.  Because the device has two sets of treble hooks, most casts result in double hits with one bass on the front treble and a second on the rear treble. 

Mary won first place in the Alabama State Science Fair and she will be entering The National Professional Fishing League this summer.  

The Mayo Clinic Recommends The Optimal Diet for Health Conscious Individuals.

After thirteen years of research with more than 45,000 Americans, the researchers at the Mayo Clinic have made a strong recommendation for their Kansas City Diet Plan.  According to the Mayo dieticians, consuming barbecue three times a week produces the best possible health results of any diets they have tested. 

Lead researcher, Dr. M. T. Stummicks, notes that “Barbecue puts the Mediterranean Diet in short pants.”  The combo plate of ribs and brisket with baked beans and collard greens may be the healthiest meal anyone can consume.  He also recommends augmenting the meal with Texas Toast garlic bread.  To add variety, a second very healthy repast is the pulled pork plate with steakhouse fries.  A key factor in making the meals healthy is a liberal supply of Kansas City Barbecue sauce.  “Everyone knows the nutritional value of tomato based foods. In KC, they have developed a ‘late heat’ aspect to their sauces that is highly addictive.  Clearly, this promotes the usage of an incredibly heathy component of the diet.”

In addition, the study shows that the Kansas City Diet has both nutritional and psychological value.  People just feel better after consuming a perfectly smoked barbecue meal.  When you feel better you live longer and you have more enjoyment in your life.  There is a lot of truth to the phrase you often see on barbecue tee shirts:  “Eat What You Want…. Die Happy!”      

So I am adding these three articles to my “News Stories I Would Like to Hear” archives.  They are at least as accurate as anything that I see on TV or read in the political newspapers.  A key difference is that my articles make me happy when I read them.

I have been following a flawed career path.

I started thinking about career options when I was a teenager.  My parents gave me great motivation and great guidance.  They were helpful and supportive but it was very clear that they expected me first to earn a college degree and second, very soon thereafter, move out. No free ride here.  They would help but I needed to work part time during the school year and full time in the summer to help with my support.

As a high school senior, I secured a minimum wage job filling orders and sweeping floors for a local wholesaler, Ann Arbor Candy and Tobacco.  Initially, the $.95 per hour compensation covered the cost of my burgeoning social life.  I worked enough hours to pay for a few dates and an occasional trip to Crazy Jim’s for a delectable Blimpy burger.  Starting in the fall of my senior year, alcohol consumption became an important part of my life.  The added expense of buying six packs on the black market put a real strain on my minimum wage budget.  It occurred to me that, if I could find a higher paying job, I could much more easily afford beer, wine and a healthy social life. More pay would reduce the number of hours I needed to work.  I would have both the time and money needed to enjoy the sixties lifestyle.  This was real capitalism on a very micro basis. 

A friend was making three times my compensation moving furniture for the local Mayflower agency.  He said that they were really short staffed.  If I showed up at the warehouse the next morning, I would be hired.  So during my college Freshman summer, I changed careers.  Moving furniture did not require a lot of skill.  In fact, the total training I received came from the Mayflower dispatcher when he hired me.  He said “Just work fast and don’t break anything.”  The job did not pay well because it was complex.  It paid well because it was a lot of physical effort and most people either could not do it or did not want to do it. 

At this point, I achieved a lot of my career goals.  I was making plenty of money.  I could easily fund all of my partying and I was tucking away enough money to carry me through the school year.   Unfortunately, I was working a lot of hours.  If you are riding back to Ann Arbor after moving someone to Cincinnati, you can’t be sipping Pabst and dancing to the Temptations.  Capitalism and careers are not perfect.  It is hard to get all of the benefits without some drawbacks. Compromise is required. 

Before long I realized that truck drivers and “helpers” worked the same amount of hours but drivers made a lot more money.  This made sense because one guy was driving the truck back from Cincinnati and other was just keeping him company.  In addition, driving a forty foot high cube semi was a skill set that few people had.  Try driving a twelve foot high, forty foot long trailer around the city streets in Ann Arbor.  In essence, drivers earned the extra pay.  They had unique and valuable skills.  After a year as a highly paid helper, I passed all of the tests required for a Commercial Drivers License and got behind the wheel of a big rig moving van.  Now I was an extremely high paid driver.  A great career move for me. Also a great benefit for Elsifor Moving and Storage.  Moving is a very cyclical business.  Most people relocate in the summer.  I piled up a lot of hours in the summer and it was beneficial to both the moving agency and me to scale back dramatically during the school year.         

Thus far, my career choices were working out very nicely.  I had sufficient time to pursue an Accounting degree from Eastern Michigan’s business school.  I really enjoyed driving a truck and moving furniture.  My robust social life was fully funded.  There was an interesting side benefit to driving the moving van.  When I needed provisions for weekend celebrations, I would pull the van up to the front of my favorite party store and buy all the alcohol the whole gang required.  Although I was nineteen years old, the proprietor of the store assumed that I was much older because I was driving a truck. No one ever checked my ID when I pulled up in a moving van.

After a little reflection, in those formative years, I created a perspective toward working and careers that I have followed for the rest of my life.  I deduced the following:

Compensation is higher for jobs that not everyone can do.

Working competently and diligently is a given.  My first job was sweeping floors.  I had to do it well and be industrious or I would be fired.  Later in life, when I was auditing public companies as a CPA, I had to do it well and be industrious or I would be fired.  Competence and hard work are required in every job.

If you wanted to have a high paying career, you needed to develop very needed skills that few others had.

If you truly enjoyed your job, you would perform better and greatly reduce stress and anxiety in your life.

This philosophy served my wife and I very nicely.  We supported our family, worked in very enjoyable careers for more than four decades and funded a comfortable retirement.

In retrospect, I made the wrong career choice.  I should have been a college football coach. 

Coaching requires a lot of work early in your career.  However, once you garner a head coaching position for a major university, you are set for life.  There are some similarities to my classic career criteria.  Initially, a lot of hard competent work is required.  You have to learn the business and hone winning coaching skills.  A lot of young professionals have accomplished this.  Every fall weekend you can watch a twenty nine to thirty nine year old phenom put his team on the path to a national championship. 

As defensive coordinator, Bubba Einstein helped to engineer the Trine University Thunder into a top twenty five ranking in National Associated  Press coaches poll.  Einstein catches the attention of Eastern Michigan University.  He takes the head coaching reins.  After two years, he moves the Fighting Emu’s to the Mid American League conference champions and earns the nineteenth slot in the National Rankings.  Again, a lot of hard competent work involved to this point.  Bubba is now hired by Rutgers to restore the glory of the early 1900’s to the school’s storied football program.  Bubba goes ten and two in his first season and is offered a five year, $50 million, contract to continue coaching the Scarlet Knights.

At 37 years of age, Bubba has totally locked up career success for the rest of his life.

Here is where the head coaching career path differs from my classic career criteria.  The classic path requires continued expert performance.  If you can’t deliver great value, you will lose your high paying job.  Companies or clients will not pay for mediocre performance.  If you have a head coaching contract with a major University, you are impervious to financial peril, whether or not you perform at a high level.

If Rutgers goes two and ten next year, Bubba still makes $10 million.  If Rutgers fires Einstein, he gets the $10 million for another four years.  He doesn’t have to work and Rutgers is going to pay him $40 million.  What a marvelous career benefit!   This happens all the time in college football.  Penn State fires their football coach and he will get roughly $50 million if he never coaches again.  LSU is committed to paying two fired coaches approximately $140 million, whether or not they ever coach again.

What a great career option.  Work hard and smart until you are 38 years old.  Get the big, long term, contract.  After signing the long term contract, work at whatever pace you like.  If your lucky, they will fire you and you will get a pile without having to do anything.  Following the classic career criteria, I worked thirty years longer than coach Einstein for substantially less compensation.  The coach’s IRA has to be a lot bigger than mine. 

So I am recommending to all my friends, become head football coaches for a major University.  I truly believe that this is a career open to anyone who wants to pursue it.  College football is very results oriented and it is a very learnable skill.  If you can prove that you can win.  Man, women, old, young, they will want you.

Do everything required to get the multi year contract.  If you really like coaching, continue working hard and smart for as long as you wish.  The $10 million per year can continue indefinitely.  If you are tired of the coaching grind, ease off and get yourself fired.  You walk away with tens of millions and you never have to work again.  Many people have achieved this objective before their 40^th birthday.   Now that is a successful career.

I have always been very thoughtful and thorough in analyzing my career opportunities.  Somehow, I over looked the incredible advantages that come with coaching a major University’s football team. 

As we say on the grid iron.  When the long term contract is signed, it’s GAME OVER.  Take a knee and run out the clock.

A while ago, I decided to treat the family to a delicious hamburger feast at my favorite fast food restaurant.  These guys have great burgers and you could make them as small or big as you wanted.  Depending upon my disposition and morning scale reading, I would order anything from a single cheeseburger to a double or even triple cheeseburger.  If I had been logging a lot of miles on the bike, I occasionally would order the triple cheeseburger (three quarter pounds of beef) and extra large fries.  One of this chain’s selling points was offering totally individualized products.  You could have just the combination of toppings and side dishes that you wanted. Everything uniquely constructed for each customer.  After receiving our order in the drive through, I pulled forward and asked my son Pete to check the bag to ensure the order is correct.  Upon inspection, he said the double cheeseburger I ordered with ketchup, onions and mayo came fully loaded with all toppings.  Good news is they gave us an extra order of fries.

I said, “This will take a minute.  I’m going to talk to the Manager.”  I parked.  Pete and my daughter Katie sensed that this was going to be a conversation they did not want miss.  So the three of us trundled inside to speak with the Chief of Operations.

The Manager politely agreed to see us.  He asked if there was a problem.  I said:

“No, quite the contrary.  Does March  27, 2016 mean anything to you?  That was the first time I came to your fine establishment and ordered a meal at the Drive Thru.  I asked for a single cheeseburger meal with ketchup, onions and mayonnaise and a vanilla shake.  You served a double cheeseburger with everything and a chocolate shake.  That was three years and two months ago.  Since then, I have returned to your restaurant thirty seven times and on all thirty seven occasions the food we received has been different than the food we ordered.  Today you changed the toppings and gave us an extra order of fries.  Rarely in modern America does anyone perform with such incredible consistency.  Thirty seven out of thirty seven covering more than a three year span. This is marvelous.  Your reliability is an inspiration to us all.”       

I gave the Manager a firm handshake and a warm smile.  Needless to say he was speechless.  I encouraged him to keep up the good work and we left.

This is a great example of something that is wrong in America.  The brilliant marketing managers at Acme Burgers come up with a strategy that will differentiate them from the “one size fits all” burger outlets.  The Chief Marketing Officer decides to tailor the products to the unique taste of each customer.  The Chief Financial Officer, however, squeezes the pennies.  “It is great to offer a lot of options to our customers but we can’t afford to add staff to ensure that the orders are correct.  If we do, the golden arch guys will eat our lunch because they don’t need more staff for their rubber stamp, all identical, burger menu.  Acme is a huge and successful company.  They know that there is a high failure rate in the tailoring process.  They also know that most of us in America are accustomed to not getting exactly what we order.  So they believe that our expectations are so low that we will anticipate a lot of errors and come back anyway.  Not delivering is, actually, a calculated corporate strategy made at the most senior level of the company.

We deserve better.

This is just one of many examples where consumers lower their expectations to accommodate intentionally shoddy performance by retailers.  One of the biggest brick and mortar pharmacies puts Acme Burgers in short pants.  Medicine For The Masses has an establishment on every other block of every city in America.  Senior management has created a corporate vision of happy customers breezing through checkout by pushing a few buttons in a sales kiosk. When one of the happy patrons buys something, they are provided with a long list of attractive discounts that AI has assembled for them based on their shopping history.  The discounts will bring them back and the kiosks are designed to make the customers perform all of the sales activities.  A great concept that requires really great systems and software.  I can see myself seated at the board room when the following conversation takes place. 

The Chief Marketing Officer says, “We have a brief window of opportunity to switch all of our point of sale functions to customer controlled kiosks.  They can easily execute all of the sales functions.  We can tailor discounts and special offers to their buying history”.  The Chief Financial Officer chimes in “This is great because we can dramatically reduce our sales and support staff by passing over all of the data entry and checkout functions to our customers”.  The Chief Information Officer notes “This is a fabulous idea.  We need to double the IT budget and we can have this functionality in place in three years”.  The room gets quiet.  The Chief Marketing Officer says to the CIO, “Fred, we can’t wait three years.  We need this in four months.  That kind of performance by IT cost your predecessor, Bob, his job.  When we hired you last June we expected a better response on these types of projects.”  So the whole group decides that they can go ahead with the four month project.  Sure there will be problems but all IT projects have problems.  Good news is that our customers live in America and have very low performance expectations for point of sale systems.

So what really happens when I go to Medicine For The Masses.  I want to pick up two prescriptions and buy some shaving cream with a “half off” coupon.  I stop at the pharmacy first.  There is no longer a clerk at the check out counter.  There is a kiosk.  The clerk used to ask for my last name and date of birth. When I provide five seconds of information, I have my prescriptions.  With the marvelous new kiosks, I have to manually input full name, date of birth, and phone number.  It asks a security question.  “What is the complete American Kennel Club name of your third dog and what is the breed.”  Strangely, I don’t have all of the information.  The pharmacist senses that we have a problem and offers to help.  In the past, this was done by the pick up clerk but they don’t have anyone in that position any longer.  The pharmacist can’t make it work either so he goes back to his terminal and finds a way to execute the transaction.  I’m not happy with the wonderful new process and the pharmacist is really unhappy. Now I go to the front of the store to a different kiosk.  I continue to perform all of the sales functions on a totally different terminal.  Good news is the only information I need to input is my phone number.  The system recognizes my account and tells me to scan my items.  Next step, scan my coupon and insert it into the machine.  The terminal says that the coupon is not valid for this account.  In addition, the terminal ate my coupon before sending me this message.  I push the help button.  The only person available to help is the store manager.  She says she is sorry that I am having problems but she can make it work.  After fifteen minutes she can’t make it work either.  She voids the transaction and goes to the Manager Only terminal and rings everything up and manually rings up the appropriate discount.

So what has just happened?  I wasted twenty five minutes for two simple transactions.  It required eight minutes of time from the pharmacist and fifteen minutes of time from the store manager.  Their compensation is slightly higher than the pick up clerk and the cashier that were let go. 

I am not happy and the pharmacist and store manager are really unhappy.  If you are going to “go live” with sophisticated systems, they should actually work.  Eventually, the terrible performance by the kiosks will filter back to the senior management team of Medicine For The Masses.  Being the new guy on the block, CIO Fred, will be blamed for non delivery even though he properly sized up the effort as a three year project to begin with.  Fred will, unfairly, lose his job.  In essence, nobody is happy.

We deserve better.        

It seems like much of my life is wrapped up in accommodating really crummy solutions that soak up way too much of my time.  A few well thought out and well executed technological solutions really work very nicely.  However, this is far less than the norm.  Big corporations get away with shoddy service because they believe we all see the world as Tony Hillerman describes in his autobiography, “Seldom Disappointed”.  In essence, Tony says that the best way to avoid disappointment is to lower your expectations.  If you don’t expect good service, you won’t be disappointed when you don’t get it.

I think we deserve better.  When I see a situation where I am getting poor service that I don’t deserve, I am changing vendors. So I am changing pharmacies.  I am moving to The Other Apothecary On The Block, Inc.  I hope it is better but if not, I will find someone else.

I tried to do this with Acme Burgers.  However, I cave to my craving for a double cheeseburger with ketchup, onions and mayo, at least twice a year. Far less than my previous weekly habit. Last week I went through the Drive Thru and ordered my unique favorite. I got a double hamburger (no cheese) with mustard.  Amazingly, the streak is still intact.  That was the fifty third consecutive visit resulting in a delivery error. 

53 and 0!  You have to love that level of consistency! 

We deserve better.

Many years ago, my mother would periodically notify the family that we needed to get the house organized.  We lived in Michigan and very often this coincided with a change of seasons. If we were moving from summer to fall, we needed to pack up the shorts and swimsuits.  Put up the baseball gear and drag out the football, sweatshirts and jackets.  We stowed the barbecue equipment and winterized the screened in porch and outdoor faucets.  When Thanksgiving was near, we needed to prepare for the winter holidays.  Drag out the Christmas stuff, ice skates, hockey equipment, sleds and toboggins.  The grandaddy of them all was “Spring Cleaning”. The first day the temperature reached sixty five degrees in March we needed to clean the entire house, inside and out and reorganize everything we owned. 

During these transitions it was obvious that I always fell below my mother’s bar for household organization. 

I stored most of my sports gear in a closet under the steps.  It would take several hours to move from one season to another because all the stuff was piled haphazardly in the closet.  What kind of stuff?  A full set of goalie pads and a full set of skater’s pads for hockey, including the extremely important cup.  Fifteen or twenty pucks.  A complete set of equipment for a baseball catcher, two fielder’s gloves (one for baseball and one for softball) and a trapper just in case I ever played first base.  There was a badminton net, four rackets and two different canisters of “birdies” (one feathers and one plastics).  Four baseball bats, including a homemade lead bat for warming up in the ondeck circle and a massive thirty six inch, ten pound, Louisville Slugger in case Man Mountain Dean showed up for a pickup game. 

Organizing a three foot by seven foot, under stair, closet is an art not a science.  It is very easy to comingle the catcher’s gear with the goalie equipment. Four times a year I would segregate everything by season and by sport.  To keep mom happy, I would toss out an entire shoebox full of unnecessary stuff.  Maybe a couple chewed up hockey pucks, a few golf balls with slices in them and a cracked frisbee. The rest, I would arrange in four piles based on the seasons.  If it was March, the spring stuff went in the front of the closet followed by the summer stuff.  The football, kicking tee, shoulder pads, and helmet went behind the summer stuff and all of the winter sports gear was jammed in the very back of the closet. 

The organization would last less than a week. When I went looking for my Ken Roswell wood tennis racket and a sleeve of Wilson tennis balls, order was destroyed.  If someone called to say; “We are playing hockey this afternoon at West Park and you are in goal”, I would dive into the closet to dig out all of the equipment.  After twenty minutes of diligent searching, I can’t find the Terry Sawchuck catching glove so I substitute the rarely used first baseman’s glove that I located fifteen minutes earlier.  Fortunately, I found the most prized piece of hockey equipment, the cup, very early in the search.                  

So early on, it was clear that my mother and I viewed organization differently.  To her, being organized meant getting rid of things that you did not use very often.  To me, it meant putting all of the great stuff that you may use every year or two in a convenient place so you can find it when you need it.  During the transitions, mom would unload all of the things we had not used for a year.  I would be searching for a place to store a left handed five iron, left handed three wood and dual sided putter in case my cousin, Dave “Lefty” Donnelly, came to visit from Indianapolis and wanted to play golf. 

In addition, in my view of organization, if something is “really cool”, regardless of whether or not you ever used it, you should keep it.

It doesn’t take long to recognize the likely results of both perspectives.  After I moved out fifty eight years ago my mom’s house became a lot more simplified and organized.  Because I decided to keep “really cool things” like my extensive Lionel Train collection and every metal truck I had been given for Christmas since 1951, my house is a little cluttered.

Organizing is an interesting and important part of life.  It is entirely based on perspective.  For my mom, if she had not used something in a year, it was gone.  Her perspective was that unused stuff interfered with living.  She may be right.  When you are going through your closets, if your point of view is “Do I ever wear this thing or use this thing?”, it becomes very easy to toss it out.  What remains is stuff you really use.  It is easy to find when you need it and you can safely walk around in your closet.  Occasionally, I can put myself in that mind set. 

However, I view organization differently. 

For example, I used to smoke cigars.  Many years ago, I quit but I still enjoy a fine Macanudo on very special occasions.  I always light one up a day or two after Michigan’s football team beats the dreaded Buckeyes.  Many years ago, my wife gave me a fine teak humidor. It has a small brass plaque on top engraved with my initials. Clearly, it is one of the coolest things I have ever owned.  From my mother’s point of view, I should have tossed the wood box fifteen years ago.  My perspective is that the humidor is very cool and I am likely to use it now and then.  In 2023, I bought three Macanudos. I bought one for the OSU victory and another to fire up if we won the Big Ten championship.  The third one was for celebrating the National Championship if we were fortunate enough to make it that far.  Over the span of five weeks, we hit all of those magical goals.  Because I was shrewd enough to save the beloved humidor, I kept the last cigar soft and fresh for all of that time.  In addition, I was able to light all three of them with a classic 1960’s Zippo lighter with a block M on the side that I have been keeping for more than fifty five years. 

So my perspective for tossing something out is “Is it cool?” and “Will I enjoy using it again?”. 

Mom and I can sort through the same closet and easily make solid decisions based on our different perspectives.  The difference is her toss out pile is a lot bigger than mine.  She will be happy that she can find her new winter coat.  I am happy that I can wear my “Last Game at Tiger Stadium Hat”, that I bought at the game in 1999, to the season opener in April 2026.  Keep or toss?  It’s black and white for both of us.  I end up with a lot more stuff but I use almost all of it.  It may take a few years but I am ready when the need arises.    

I am sticking with my view of organization.  I truly am happy that I have saved so much “really cool stuff”.  So is the storage locker company.