I was cleaning out a relative’s apartment this weekend (yeah, more death and destruction in Bloggerville).

While I was cleaning the Collyer Brothers-like apartment (though not a home) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collyer_brothers, two timeless axioms of my youth (one from my grandmother and one from the rabbis) came to mind:

• Wear good (and clean) underwear just in case you are hit by a bus so the emergency room doctors will know you come from a good family (and presumably treat you better); and
• Live every day as if it were your last on earth.

How do these concepts work together, you ask?  Work with me, here.

While there may be loftier connections, mine is decidedly mundane:

DON’T EMBARRASS US OR MAKE US CRINGE AFTER YOU DIE.

And the corollary:  Get rid of pictures, outfits you haven’t used in a long time, do your laundry EVERY DAY so that no one has to see anything that could make him or her go blind.

Because everyone was young, wild and stupid, once (maybe more than once).  Just don’t leave a record of it, for others who are cleaning out your home to find.

Examples of acceptable things to leave behind:

• Kick-ass black leather skirts (regardless of your age at death) and even tasteful lingerie;
• Memorabilia and photo albums (that don’t have nude or semi-nude pictures of you with other, now aged or dead relatives, however young or not you were at the time);
• Keepsakes, necklaces, etc. (of whatever or no value) that your family members can wear to carry you with them always;
• Phone number of 24-hour cartage company to cart away some of the inevitable detritus;
• List of accounts and financial representatives; and
• A last will and testament.

Examples of things NOT to leave behind:

• Dominatrix outfits, even if still in the box;
• 1970s Polaroid photo album of various poses of you and your partner naked from the waist down;
• ANYTHING from the 1970s for that matter;
• Collection of 20 years of junk mail (not every collection has value); and
• Gross piles of dirty laundry strewn about.

Did you stop at “Polaroid photo album of various poses of you and your partner naked from the waist down”?  Yeah, I knew you would.  Yep.  I almost went blind.  And I had to stop once I realized what it was I was looking at.

I know, once they (and we) were young.  Once, they (and we) were middle-aged.  Hell, do it in your 80s.  But if you are in your 80s, burn the pictures every night.  And in your 90s, don’t take pictures.  Because you will forget that you have them.  Because, with most of your life in the rear-view mirror, it is almost a certainty that you violate the Rule of the Ages:

DON’T EMBARRASS US OR MAKE US CRINGE AFTER YOU DIE.

This blog will self-destruct in 25 years.