On wrinkles

I am a purger, not a saver. I have a small container of mementos from my childhood, and each of my children has a "box" of keepsakes from babyhood and another from school. That's it. Oh, and my husband has his own box: the box of all the "Unique and Creative" decorating...ah...items he had when in his dorm room when we met.
And while that purging tendency leads to a very organized home and office, it often leads to regret as well. It's been more than once that I've looked in my closet for a certain shirt--only to recall that I donated it to Goodwill a few weeks before. And I have looked with speculation at the garbage can, wondering whether I SHOULD dig out that homework paper my son brought home--the one I just looked at and tossed--the one that now lies buried beneath coffee grounds, a banana peel, and three wadded paper napkins. Probably not. He'll bring home more papers soon enough.
How often do we throw out ideas in our writing? Too often. And how often do we regret those decisions to toss instead of keep? Ditto. It's hard, though, to find a place to store all those wrinkled pages, a place to keep them safe from coffee grounds and banana peels and wadded napkins. For me, the answer is this blog. I know that often those very ideas that seem lackluster today can have a certain gleam tomorrow, especially when they've been polished a bit.
Welcome to my wastebasket.