Monday, April 09, 2007

Partial Validation of Newspaper Hoarding

I'm whittling down my pile of unread newspapers, the first salvo in my campaign to reclaim my house from my Collyer Brothers-like tendencies and return it to something close to suitable for human habitation.

I don't mean to let them pile up, but between my inability to get through the Sunday Washington Post in a timely fashion, and getting three nearly-identical local papers (the Reston Observer, Reston Connection, and Reston Times, it adds up.

(Though nowadays, I just pick one of the local papers at random and instantly recycle the other two.)

On a good Sunday, I'll get through the A-Section of the Sunday Washington Post, the comics, the Best Buy and Circuit City flyers, and the Post Sunday Magazine. (And that's including a Saturday afternoon head start.)

As to the rest:

* The rest of the circulars go into the trash, guilt-free, after a week.

* The Travel and Book sections go into a separate pile to be read later (the Book sections are the stubbornest of the lot, since they're not at all time-sensitive, as opposed to years-old travel "bargains of the week.")

Both of these are, of course, fantastical conceits, since my unread books pile is measured now in linear feet, and I would need to take a vacation in order to go anywhere.

* Sports gets a glance-and-go.

* The rest -- Outlook, Autos, Style, Metro and Arts -- go into the Evergrowing Guilt Pile, since they may still contain useful stuff (outside of any obvious time-expired things, like event listings).

So it's probably not a good thing that I got partial validation of this strategy just now -- I was skimming an article from March 18, 'U-Turn on H Street', when I saw that the print edition featured a picture of Son (of a friend of mine), that wasn't in the online version.

Also, I note that around that particular period of time, both the Click & Clack column and one of the Reston papers made the egregious error of dubbing the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in South Carolina "Paris Island," instead of Parris Island.

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