For three days, I had four sets of keys.  I had a key to anything you can imagine locking:  My car, my rental car, my building, my suite of offices, my home, and some random keys that I don’t recall using in years.  I felt burdened by my keyage.  It seemed that I would need a handbag just to carry these little metal admission tickets.

I’m down to two sets for general purposes which are clipped together, and a Joyce Kramer carabiner with the old car key which no longer works and the security pass to my office building.  The rental car has been returned; the car keys are clipped to the house keys, and my handbag has lost two pounds.  Well, that could be a slight exaggeration.

While forced to juggle the four sets, I managed to lose one of them twice, another one three times, and a third remained lost for an entire day.  I found it by dumping everything out from two bags and hanging upside down in my rental car.  Now that I’ve managed to consolidate and reconfigure, I’m seriously considering a biker’s wallet or a fanny pack.

In the process of learning to live with so many keys, I actually reached a point where I wanted to have none.  I’d like to ditch my car’s remote, my home security keyfob, the three keys for my offices, the random keys that don’t work anymore, and the extra key to a friend’s house that I have never once deployed.

Right after that de-keyifying undertaking, I’m going to cut my hair off to my ears, shed the three pounds I gained during the 90 days when the doctor discouraged me from exercising, and give away the seventeen handbags that hang from the hooks on my stairwell.  Behind those discards will come a purge of jackets (at least ten), sweaters (I’ve lost count), books — uh, well, no, maybe not — and coffee cups, of which I have sufficient to stock a busy cafe.

If I make it through that cleansing process, I’ll start on the emotional baggage, which I intend to send to the landfill.  No decent compost pile would have it.

Ah, spring-cleaning!  The key to everything.