Option 1: I found in my home office a bag filled with collected items from my whole life.
So the first shuffle was by how much I liked the items. The stack at the top of the page I liked the most, at the bottom, the least. Among the items on top were the regalia I won in college as a Chancellor's Marshal, and a letter from the woman who's become my wife. I kept this bag of items becasue each of them had some meaning to me, at least at the time I got them, so personal like versus dislike tells me how much my interests and values have changed over the years. Pay no attention to the demonic kitten on the dog pillow.
The second shuffle was based on materials: paper, wood, cloth, stone, metal, plastic. Materials could indicate the likely survivability of these items, were this bag to be found several centuries from now in some future archaeological dig. Note that I am now officially boring to the kitten.
In the third shuffle, I put the items into stacks of function. This inculded toys/games, musical instruments, educational items, lighted objects, containers, instruction booklets, identifying items such as an expired passport, ornamental items, odd clothing types, hand-written material. I feel that this is the most important way to divide these items. Function of these pieces relates heavily to why we bother making them at all. Please note that we are now kittenless.
The final shuffle of items is by color. I put them into white, black, silver, yellow/gold, purple, red, brown, blue, multi-colored, and blue & gold in honor of my alma mater, UCLA. I think that this is the most stupid way to divide the piles. It doesn't suggest anything important about any of these pieces. Note that a this point my wife wanted to play with an item or two.
The last portion of this essay is supposed to be me ruminating on what I've learned about myself by doing this exercise. Honestly, I've already noticed changes in myself as time has marched on. In this bag resided a variety of stuff ranging from tiny toys from my youth to oddments that I filed in there in my forties. When I look at many of these things, I feel a lack of value and interest in many of the treasures, but some of them stimulate memories about which I will always want to be reminded.