OK, so I'm packing today, getting ready to move into an apartment with my boyfriend on Saturday. I'm going from a 3 bedroom townhouse to a 2 bedroom garden apartment. Needless to say, I have to prune out a lot of my junk or I wont have room to move around in the new apartment, expecially since my new boyfriend is moving his own share of material things that will be taking up their own space.
So for the last few days I've been packing and at the same time deciding what's not worth packing. I've been pretty good, so far, and I'm getting rid of a lot of crap that should have gone out long ago. But the boxes of "keeper" stuff are mounting.
One thing I've been struggling with are letters. For about 10 years of my life I was an avid letter writer. I had tons of penpals, and I wrote and recieved hundreds of letters while I was a missionary and while I was in the Air Force. Now I have 3 very large boxes full of letters. I'm really torn about throwing them out. I haven't looked at them in 9 years and feel like I should just chuck them, but part of me feels like that's throwing away a part of myself.
I also have a stash of old ticket stubs (theater, movie, train, plane, event, etc.), and other little bits of junk that act like keys to memories I might otherwise lose. Does anyone else here save junk like this? Should I bite the bullet and send it all to the dump?
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
No. Save all paper. At all costs.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
Chuck the ticket stubs. Keep the letters.
I feel for you, I've been sorting through boxes and closets this week too.
Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
I junked just about everything when I moved from FL to TX. BUT
AND THIS IS CAPITAL LETTER IMPORTANT...
I saved ALL the letters, AND all the ticket stubs.
Save it all!
I like to think of these things as part of an eventual exhibit of one's life. Like:
Karl Ed: The amusement park years. And they'll have your ticket stubs from 1987-1992, plus a letter where you describe barfing after eating and then riding the Tilt-A-Whirl.
Plus, if you ever become president, they'll need it all for your library.
Posted by lcarus (Member # 4395) on :
I compulsively keep stuff too. I agree with DKW.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
I promise to buy any book that comes out entitled KarlEd: The amusment park years.
Hobbes Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
If you want them, why not keep them? Surely putting some boxes away in storage isn't going to be a problem, and the contents are a source of joy to you, if I'm reading what you're saying correctly.
Posted by jehovoid (Member # 2014) on :
Or if you are just going to throw them out, send them to me. I'm sure there're hours of fun to be had at your expense.
Posted by Olivet (Member # 1104) on :
Keepp the letters, and the ticket stubs. Tell your boyfriend that you're going to scrapbook them someday. He might even buy it Mine did. Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Karl, why don't you pay a company to scan them? Or scan them yourself?
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
I love it when things like this happen together.
Posted by Amka (Member # 690) on :
Tom, that was just what I was going to say. Scan them.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
As a fellow packrat, I'd like to say that I don't think a scan is the same.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
I just threw away a ticket stub for Dirty Dancing when I realized that I couldn’t remember which of the three times I saw that movie on a first date the stub was from.
Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :
I have to admit, I save a lot of this stuff, too. I have a shoebox full of old letters, which I have recently been contemplating chucking out. I also have piles of old professional journals, which I can't bring myself to throw out, even though some of them are probably useless by now. I save theatre and concert programs, and sometimes the ticket stubs, but I have to admit, I have never bothered to save old airline and train tickets, and have only saved movie tickets from very special times.
After a while, this meaningful junk starts to overtake your life.
I suggest carefully going through it and seeing what is really meaningful, and what you can bear to throw away, if space will really be a problem in your new place.
**Ela**
Posted by Bob the Lawyer (Member # 3278) on :
One of the advantages of moving every four months is that I have to go through my things all the time. I also keep all my letters, but I always end up going through them when I pack them up. If I notice I don't "feel" anything after reading a letter and I haven't for the past couple of moves I get rid of it. That way I can keep the number down to a reasonable level. That, and I don't write many letters.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
Boxes of letters and old papers are the reason beds stand a foot off the bedroom floor. So you have a place to store them.
I would feel like I'd lost a big part of myself if I lost all the letters, sketches, bits of writing, and everything else I've collected over the years.
When my parents moved, my dad threw away a whole bucket of pictures of our family that pretty much was our family's visual history from the time I was very young (we don't believe in photo albums). That was a HUGE loss that I regret deeply.
Throw other things away, but don't throw out your papers.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
I don't scrapbook, but I understand there are folks who really get into it.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
Now, *there's* an idea. Maybe you can save space by putting the stuff in some kind of scrap book or photo album?
Posted by porcelain girl (Member # 1080) on :
i save nothing. i am the ghost of a dandelion caught up in the breeze; i am words written on water.
hee hee hee.
Posted by plaid (Member # 2393) on :
Saving letters is good! Even if you don't want to read them just now, they'll be great to read 10 or 20 years from now.
Ticket stubs and stuff like that I try to be more selective of. (OK, when I went to Europe I saved EVERYTHING -- stuff like candy bar wrappers and bus tickets and subway maps. But a Spanish candy bar is much more interesting than an American one...)
My biggest challenge = keeping the non-personal papers under control -- all those "interesting" articles I meant to read, or work-related stuff... for a while I had a yearly ritual of going through my filing cabinet and recycling all the old stuff I didn't need... but I got lazy and out of the habit and I really need to do it sometime soon...
Posted by Toretha (Member # 2233) on :
save them. Definitely. I've got a scrapbook that I put together after realizing that i'd saved every letter and many notes and drawings people had given me for years. It's really fun, going in there and looking at that stuff.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Save the letters -- but throw out the cardboard and/or plastic boxes in which they are probably being kept -- even if you hafta throw out the couch to make space. Maybe there is space under your couch between the gauzy white bottom cover and the slats which support the (springs, maybe, and) cushion for equal-sized antique wooden boxes to replace the legs. Or put a folded futon on those boxes to replace the couch. Make the boxes a base for your bed. Remove the legs from your coffee table, and put the table top on a good quality steamer trunk.
Simple fact is the overwhelming majority of the stuff in your life is junk (because they are easily replaced) that you wouldn't particularly miss if a disaster took them away. But you would miss the photographs, letters, and other true memorabilia...eventually. But make sure that you aren't just packratting&calling it "memorabilia".
[ January 29, 2004, 03:22 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
Thanks guys. In the end, I am moving most of the stuff I have. I've scrapped all the files of articles, etc that I "meant to read someday", but the letters and other memorabilia are going with me.
One thing I did vow to do is to take an evening a week and go through each box. When I see something trivial that I kept to remember something by, I'm going to write down the memory, then I can scrap the trivial thing (or scan/photograph it, then scrap it).
By the way, aspectre , I really like the idea of making memorabilia storage part of the furniture. That's a really great idea.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
Hey Karl, weren't we going to get a screen shot of you in the background of a movie in drag?
[EDIT: I refuse to say how much I want to see this shot, at least in front of Annie ]
Hobbes
[ January 29, 2004, 09:24 PM: Message edited by: Hobbes ]
Posted by Godric (Member # 4587) on :
Wasn't the movie Head of State? I keep meaning to see that only because you have a cameo Karl.
Anyway, I agree with everyone about keeping all the letters. I keep all letters -- even the unsent ones I've written. Maybe them especially...
As far as movie stubs go, I just scrap all of them. I do, however, keep a movie journal both online and in a notebook. I keep track of the date I saw the film (both theater trips and viewings at home) as well as other random information about the movie (which, of course, I need to do anyway with films I review).
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
I still have the ticket for the only big concert I ever went to--U2 in 1991. It's tacked to the wall of my cubicle.
A girlfriend in a very former life used to keep a sugar packet from every restaurant we ever ate at. I wonder what she did with all that sugar.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
My freshman year of college, my best friend was a guitarist in a band and very into music, so we went to a different concert almost every weekend. He also liked hanging around the rear entrance after the concert to try and get them to sign our tickets, and that worked about half the time. At the Toad the Wet Sprocket, the band even took our picture. The time that felt the weirdest was after a Vienna Boys Choir concert. Fortunately, my friends spoke French, so we knew EXACTLY how explicitly they were telling us to go away.
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I agree with DKW.
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Mine did. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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