un-packing

[bryiarrose]

how does anyone make decisions about the things collected as memories--presents, decoration, keepsakes--when the memories are no longer current?

when they cease being applicable to the current definition of your history, what have they become? certainly no less meaningful, beautiful, strange or sad, but still something that takes up space.

how do you decide.. what stays, what goes, what guilt will let you part with?

Comments

[humpingbears.livejournal.com]

I'm working on this very problem right now. Painful but very necessary. There's been a box sitting in the corner of my living room since I moved to DC 2 years ago. It's stuff, mostly gifts, that I moved up here from Nashville. I figure, if I never missed them in 2 years, I don't need to move them to Texas, no matter how much I like the people who gave me the stuff. Yeesh.

after a day spent basement-cleaning

[omnia-mutantur.livejournal.com]

We're trying to decide what to throw away and what to keep, and I feel guilty/pleased every time he gets rid of something from his first marriage.

I try to find an internal poignancy meter, and anything that doesn't register, can go. Unless I just plain like it, or it gives me joy when I pack/unpack it.

Also, if I can tell it's unhealthy I try to let it go. I miss some of the journals/keepsakes from when I was a suicidal drunk, but it's probably best that I allow the mercy of a cloudy memory to swallow those days.

[omaha.livejournal.com]

i don't know. i look at the boxes and think, this time i can be ruthless. i've had a easier time with the 2d things [papers, letters, photos] of late, by scanning them and getting rid of the originals. and've *thought i could do similar with the 3d ones...take pictures and then get rid of 'em...but every time i hold those bits, they end up getting repacked.

the other thought, tho, is to redefine them; make them into something new....

[sarendipatree.livejournal.com]

Documentation of my real life with my friends and our activities -- stays. Else... Hangs around for awhile, and then if I find that it breaks or doesn't come to please me... Goes.

I threw out a super-nice analog radio tuner one time cuz I was moving in a hurry, and I didn't really have anywhere to store it, and since radio was so attrocious those days in the cities, out it went. That's about the few thing that I've gotten rid of that I really regret.

[notwolf.livejournal.com]

i have a hard time with that. THat's why my boat has oars AND sails.

[contrariadne.livejournal.com]

um, i save everything. this also means that i have A Lot of Stuff.

[molly-grrl.livejournal.com]

I am in the process of making that decision right now. I think it really depends on what I can make out of keepsakes: if I look at something and feel kind of *numb* or ambivalent about it, I've been tossing them.

I am currently jettisoning all of my crap from when I was married and a great deal of other crap. On the other hand: never ever ever throw away old journals. And I have 2 boxes of those.