A Cubic Foot of France

As those of you following along at home on the downsizing slippery slope may know, I often think of my 'stuff' in terms of cubic feet. As in "how many cubic feet did you take to the thrift store today?" A few years ago, I decided that my growing collection of travel guides and maps and clippings about places I wanted to go would be best collected in boxes so that when you got ready to go somewhere (or a friend asked for stuff about a certain place) you could just pull out a box. So it happened that I have a box labeled 'France' with about a cubic foot of stuff about France. Which would be sad enough if there weren't also a box with about as much material labeled 'Paris.' There are other boxes, too. For 'New York' for example.

This system of organizing the travel-related stuff works well enough. But now that I'm downsizing one has to ask whether all this really bears saving. Also, I found one very mysterious thing in this box. Stationery from a hotel in Paris. One that I'm pretty sure I never stayed in. OK, I'm completely sure I never stayed there. It is close to the last place I stayed in Paris so maybe we wandered in and got the stationery to remember the place? Or someone who stayed there brought it back for us? A look at the place on the WEB makes me want to go stay there! But where did I get this stationery?

So what did I do? I bookmarked the hotel's page on my computer. And I put the stationery back in the box with all the books, maps and language guides. And I closed the top. This will get decided another day.