Can you have too many keys?
I’m not necessarily the most organized of people (which is kind of ironic since I am usually the organizer of most things I’m involved in).
However, dealing with so many projects that involve many different people/schedules/timelines, as well as a full-time job (where I couldn’t get away with being completely scattered), and a highly active social life (that lately I’ve really put on the back burner) I do have to maintain a certain level of organization. Most of this organizing takes place in my head.
I rarely think about all of the keys on my key chain and whether they are 
organized or not. Each of them has a purpose and when I need them they are there…all in one place (except for when I can’t find them at all…I can’t begin to recall all the times I’ve left them on the table/my bed/kitchen counter and they were nowhere to be found)
However, lately due to the fact that my car is currently being worked on, I’ve had to add or remove keys a few times as I’ve changed vehicles.
Each time I’ve thought the following:
1. Do I really need all of those keys?
2. I should probably go through them to remove any keys that I don’t need, who knows what I may still have a key to?
3. With that many keys, how the heck do they still end up way at the bottom of my purse each time I go to look for them?
Well in this day in age where keyless entry methods (pin code entry, push start buttons, doormen, badges/scan cards, and voice activated entry) seem to more and more sneak into my world, I thought there is absolutely no way I still need all of these keys!
Last night I finally did a complete and detailed assessment of each key and decided that yes, I do need all of those keys. All 21 of them. Good news… I didn’t still have keys from an old vehicle, place of residence, place of employment, childhood treehouse on the key chain. Bad news (although still more good than bad really)…I don’t necessarily need all 21 on a daily basis. Therefore, I figured these keys do not need to be on one keychain all at the same time. So I narrowed it down to the basics and this got me down to 7 keys (or at least it will have after I finish color coding, separating into categories, etc.)
The 7 keys this leaves me with are: Car Key (I think it might be time I embraced the push start button), Office Keys (Unfortunately with this category I’m stuck with 3 keys that are all necessary), House Key, Studio Key, Parent’s House Key (everytime I put this on it’s own keychain I lose it, so it must remain on my primary set of keys).
What I removed were those that aren’t part of my daily world which included keys to the garage, my brother’s offices, misc.gates/alternate entries at my home that I never use, other people’s offices, old gym locker, P.O. Box, spare key to parents house, as well as a few other keys that I use rarely.
In a month where lately anything I’ve been having doubts about, was sick of or annoyed with the universe seems to have found a way for me to deal with parting ways with it, it was kind of nice to clear some clutter on my own terms and on my own time. Now if I could only do this with my dresses.
Seven keys. Let’s see how long it takes me to embark on new journeys or start new projects that will require the addition of keys.
