Emotional Attachment to Stuff

[Wausau74]

Does anyone else suffer? I have several huge boxes of stuff for a scrapbook (that i have been moving from apt. to house for about 7 years) that I keep saying I am going to go through. I know some of it I don't want to toss, but why do I keep every card I ever got? Why do I keep all this stuff? I really don't even know what is in those boxes anymore, but I just never get around to doing a scrapbook!

What is reasonable to keep? What is reasonable to hold onto?

I really like watching Life's Laundry on PBS because they talk about this issue, but I haven't watched it for awhile. One family had Christmas cards from like 1982 they were keeping. Sounds like me.

help . . . .

[kimmie-pooh]

I'm sorry, I have no advice. I hold on to stuff like that, too. I have 3 shoe boxes full of letters dh and I wrote back and forth to each other in high school! Shows you how much we paid attention in classes.

It's hard for me to throw away old stuff, but I have no problem throwing away cards we get in the mail now. Luckily, dh doesn't really have sentimental attachments to a lot of things. If he did, I cannot imagine how our house would look with TWO pack-rats living in it.

I know other ladies here will have some great advice for you.

[Wausau74]

Thanks for your reply! Many have read, few have replies.

DH is the same way. He tosses all cards and everything.

I have spent the last 2 days going through the scrapbook boxes and I am nearly done. It is kind of freeing! I have thrown out TONS of stuff ( the garbage bags are heavy!) and mostly just kept letters, school years stuff and the like. I tossed tons of cards. I am going to suggest to DH that we don't buy each other cards anymore as they are just tossed. They all say the same thing anyway! hee hee.

So I think I will end up with just one box of stuff. Then I will get scrapbooks for our wedding, baby shower, school years stuff and a box for letters taht I will somehow put dividers in.

[mum2be]

I wrote a thread about this and got some great replies. You may want to do a search. I think the title was something about sentimental items...

[Wausau74]

thanks!

[RiBe ccaLin]

One thing that I would suggest for senitmental items that you want to keep, is to scan them. We recently had a fire in our house and lost everything. I had been meaning to scan in all the papers my mom had saved from my baby years, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. Scan them in and send a cooy of the files to a friend or relative. For those bigger items that you want to keep a memory of, but don't necassarily want to keep the item around, take a picture. I did this when I was getting married and it saved so much on packing stuff up and moving it. Again, make a copy of the pictures and send them somewhere else.

It takes time, but in an emergency, you'll be truly grateful. You will still have the memories, even if for some reason you get rid of the actual item. And a couple CDs are easier to deal with than boxes of stuff.

[sarah_bella1050]

I probably wouldn't throw away all the old cards. If they are really pretty, or I like them I will make something new out of the picture on the front. You could let you dc make new cards, cologes, or pictures for people out of cutting up the old card and glueing them to cunstruction paper and adding on any other crafting supply that they wanted. I'm all about recycling

[Rowenta]

have a friend go through it with you!! They are the bEST at decided what you NEED and don't!
OR, if you can't do that, go through it now, then again a bit later. You will soon weed through most of it.
remember it does COST you to keep stuff around!

[ollineeba]

[QUOTE=RiBe ccaLin]One thing that I would suggest for senitmental items that you want to keep, is to scan them. We recently had a fire in our house and lost everything. I had been meaning to scan in all the papers my mom had saved from my baby years, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. Scan them in and send a cooy of the files to a friend or relative. For those bigger items that you want to keep a memory of, but don't necassarily want to keep the item around, take a picture. I did this when I was getting married and it saved so much on packing stuff up and moving it. Again, make a copy of the pictures and send them somewhere else. QUOTE]

Oh, how sad I'm sorry you lost everything!
This happened recently to a local family and I told my DH that those are the things I would be most upset about- the baby books, pictures, etc. We should make copies of those things. Good idea.

[ollineeba]

wausau- I don't have too much advice, because I do the same thing. I was able to slim my stash down to a few shoeboxes, though, which is a big improvement! I have one shoebox for each baby and one for DH & me (wedding cards, anniversary, etc.)
I still have more to weed through, but I'm getting there
Good luck!

[mommystinch]

Congrats on going through the stuff. This is the first time I've read this thread, but I have been in your shoes. I had a closet full of boxes that I have been saving for years... just in case. Over the summer, I had a huge case of "if it's in a box and doesn't get used, we don't need it." I began to empty out the closet and had several large paperbags full of recycling to take out each week I certainly can't tell you what to get rid of, because everyone has different limits. For me, I finaly came to terms with getting rid of everything but the most important to me. Some of the things I got rid of were all the cards from my mother's shower for me... I don't know any of the people, and they were just signed, generic cards.. I certainly didn't have a bond to them. I also got rid of all of the old college notes from classes that "might come in handy one day," and I got rid of all of the generic certificates for perfect attendance, science fair participant, etc. I know I had perfect attendance all through school. I don't need some piece of paper around to acknowledge that. It came down to priorities for me, and since this stuff had no use or importance to me in my daily life, it was out the door. And boy was it so freeing to get rid of all that stuff!

Good luck to everyone else!

[MommyDOK]

Last year, my dd and I were companions to an elderly man with alzheimers. He eventually moved into a nursing home. Seeing him there (and all the others) was like an epiphany for me. Nobody had a cluttered room--- there were a few photos on the walls and a few books and maybe 10 outfits in the closet. Sooner or later, I'm going to be in a nursing home with just a few boxes of stuff--- that's it. So I realized, what am I saving all this stuff for? I'm 35 now and I won't live forever.

[Shiloh]

I scan and take digital pictures therefore I could size them for my one day scrap book and then I get dh to burn them onto cd and when I get really anal I make him put hte cd's in our saftey deposit box!

But it works wonders with kids' art, bulky items etc.
And cause I scan those hotel brochures, tickets they are flat when I print them out.

works great for other things you hate to part with - stuffed animals etc.