What is this urge to declutter, to glide simply and smoothly into the new year? Last evening I felt a sudden need to tidy up my desktop. Into the trash went receipts for orders already delivered, backup copies of documents already submitted.

This morning I’m checking streaming entertainment accounts, wondering if I can shed any of them. Perhaps the doubling-down of a pandemic is not the time to have fewer entertainment options, though, so I’ve left them temporarily in place. 

Of course, the tidying that really needs to happen isn’t virtual; it’s the all-too-real piles of papers and files, the boxes of old clothes and bins of toys that I can no longer say I’m “holding for the grandchildren.” The grandchildren are here and they won’t be needing any armless Barbies, thank you very much.

Getting rid of all that stuff, I’m afraid, will have to wait till 2022. 

(These mallards will have no trouble gliding smoothly into the new year.)