Cannot open greyed out files

My husband and I are both users and share our iMac. I'm trying to clean out my stuff such as documents, file folders and screen shots no longer needed. My issue is I'm fed up with all the greyed out stuff I run into everywhere I try to go to open up my stuff. I open Pages and choose Open and then a long list of my stuff shows up greyed out and cannot open up. I try Finder and scroll through all my stuff (and that is an ugly chore no one wants to do at all) trying to find the one document, the one folder or the one screen shot to open up. When I do finally find it greyed out I choose it and it opens. I go back to Pages choose Open and the long list opens up again and I cannot open it again, its' greyed out again. I go back to Finder and now cannot find it at all. Perhaps I'm missing to do something maybe a correct procedure.

From Pages, "How do I open up a greyed out document, file folder, screen shot and keep it ready to open at will again and again? Do I always need to open a greyed out item from Finder? Do greyed out items get lost in Finder?

Please help, thanks.

iMac (27-inch, Late 2012), MacOS High Sierra, Version 10.13.6, Processor 2.9 GHz Intel Core 15, Memory 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3