Most days at our house, we manage to deal only with what absolutely must be done -- like most families, or so we console ourselves. There's not much time or energy for the extra effort.

We cook only the food needed for dinner. That once-a-week cookie baking I thought would be great to do with the kids? Happens once a month, if we remember.

We go to the mall only when the kids must have a new winter coat or larger shoes. Recreational shopping? Who does that?

So when the speakers on our only television set started going wonky, we didn't replace them right away. It was still possible to comprehend any show we were motivated enough to watch, and we didn't feel ambitious enough to wade into the big-box media store.

Sometimes, though, the seemingly optional things, left undone, can come back to haunt you in strange, life-changing ways.

The day arrived recently when the TV situation finally had to be addressed. If falling on the sofa to sit zombie-like in front of the "boob tube" is the one thing you can do when you can't summon the energy for anything else, and if neither the speakers nor the close-caption button work -- well, trust me on this, moving pictures are not enough. Off to the store, alone.

I thought I'd measured everything carefully before making my purchase, but when my husband carried the TV in from the car and tried to set it in the cabinet, it was a smidgen -- just a smidgen -- too wide. He'd been wanting to get rid of the hulking cabinet anyway, since it overpowered the small room, and here was a good excuse to do so.

But before we could wrestle the gigantic piece of furniture out of the room and down the stairs, I had to empty its two big drawers. I knew I would find dozens of old videotapes and cartridges for game systems that no longer exist. I knew there'd be movies beloved by my kids when they were still in elementary school, but long since outgrown.

I was not prepared for the other things I found. Going through them and contemplating the fact that they'd sat there untouched for seven years has had a profound impact.

There were kids' school assignments and art class projects, old bills, paycheck stubs, newspaper clippings, unread magazines, undone crossword puzzles, even the city-issued occupancy permit for our warehouse-turned-home.

The dates on each piece of paper told the story: Nearly all of them had entered the house during the days immediately after 9/11. The only thing I remember about that time is that we went through those weeks as if in a fog.

Dealing with paperwork is tough in the best of times; it seemed completely irrelevant in September 2001.

And so the piles sat around the room somewhere, untended to, until some urgent reason made me sweep them into a drawer. Probably last-minute "cleaning" before some guests arrived. Once there? Out of sight, out of mind.

Now that events have forced them out of the drawer and back into my consciousness, I've been ruminating on all the different messages these papers send.

One is that I haven't tended to my home and family as well as I wish I had. Too often the urgent has crowded out the important.

Another message is how constant change is in our world. The featured story on the May 2001 copy of The Atlantic shoved into that drawer was "Russia Is Finished." Seven years later, that certainly is not the case.

Those older and wiser than I am tell me life has always been like this, for everyone. Just as soon as we, or a magazine's editors, think we have a handle on things, the world changes. Time flies, and there's never enough of it for all the work. Our children grow up in a flash, leaving us to shuffle through their old spelling tests.

In this turbulent world, my heart is turning toward home. This is my last column for the Thursday Post-Gazette (but I will continue my Monday column, which appears in print on Page A-2). I will miss this weekly conversation with readers very much. Evidence of its power hit home when we tried to get rid of that big TV cabinet.

I called Spark of Hope, a charity I wrote about back in May. If you call them with furniture to donate, they'll come pick it up and deliver it the same day to one of the scores of needy families who've turned to them for help.

It took a few days and a second call before I heard from the charity's mastermind, Jack Stalter. He laughed and said, "Well, ever since someone at the PG wrote about us, we have so many donations, we can hardly keep up, and no one needs a TV cabinet these days."

Foiled by my readers! What a wonderful fate. God bless you people for your generous hearts! It has been my honor to share the past eight years with you.