Process Of Clearance

Last month, I received an internal email saying that two blocks of offices and toilets would be under renovation during the semester break, that we occupants were required to move everything, except for the existing furniture, out of our offices and leave the doors unlocked by 22 May. Several classrooms would be available for us to keep our desktops or other belongings temporarily until the work was finished.

Soon after the final exams were over early this month, some colleagues started their clearance. When deadline was approaching, more piles of used papers, past-year students' assignments, dusty files, expired snacks in packets or tins, old decorative items were placed outside the offices to be removed by the cleaners. Every day I walked up and down the three-level blocks, I was impressed by the quantity of trash which used to be stored for months, maybe for years, within the limited space of the offices either occupied by one person or shared by two.

While some were busy inside their offices, others were also busy travelling between their rooms and the temporary three-week store rooms. I was among the last to take action. Thanks to the foreign language subject I was teaching, I did not have to keep students' thick reports. Because of my habit to reorganize my documents regularly and pass used papers to my brother who could print exercise on the other empty side for his tuition students, minimal things were left on the shelves. Even then, once I seriously checked around, I could still throw away rubbish.

When I brought home important books and files from my office and put them in my study room, I realized I had kept many outdated brochures and old cards in my book rack. So I extended the clearing process to my house.

This week, I could no longer stay comfortably in my office of which construction workers had removed the door and broken the windows. Besides attending a two-day ICT workshop, I had been spending most of the office hours in the library. The motivation was the access to Internet rather than secular books.

While sitting in front of the computer this morning, I suddenly had the idea of deleting unimportant inbox emails which I had kept since the opening of my account. While browsing through the hundreds of email titles or contents, I realized now I judged junk mails, especially the forwarded ones, those I used to be interested in reading.

Next, I would also be getting rid of rubbish thoughts in my mind. Which process of clearance are you in?