After the painful confession about my hoarding of office supplies in Day 24, I needed something a little easier — so I deliberately set off to find a simpler item. Like an earlier item, this cannot be classified as an actual box — it’s a filing crate. But it was taking up space in the garage — and now, it’s not. Victory!

Box 25: Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2023

CONTENTS: Perhaps you remember Entertainment Weekly magazine. At its prime, it was a pretty decent magazine, so much so that I would religiously keep its year-end issues, which included its critics’ picks for the best movies, TV shows, books and music of the year. I think my idea was that I would watch all the movies, read all the books, etc., and that would fill my days until the next year-end issue came around. Ah, simpler times. Just for kicks, I flipped through the 1993 issue — 30 years ago. The movie of the year: “The Piano.” Hard to argue with that, although this also was the year of “Dazed and Confused” (No. 3) and “Schindler’s List” (No. 4). The book of the year was “Smilla’s Sense of Snow,” the literary thriller that showed up in the garage a couple of weeks ago and now is in my Little Free Library. Coincidence … or not? The file crate also contains a bag of socks — so this is where they go when the dryer eats them — and a blue plastic sheet that the household Master Recycler assures me she can use.

DISPOSITION: The plastic sheet now is in the custody of the Master Recycler. Some of the socks will experience joyous reunions with their mates; the remainder will find themselves stashed into the rag bag in the hall closet. The file crate will be donated to one of local establishments that accepts office supplies, as will the magazine rack that held those old copies of Entertainment Weekly. And the magazines themselves will be recycled. So long, 1990, 1993, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004.