Decluttering - where do you draw the line?

Citygirl1

Hi all, I am trying to declutter and keep things to a minimum but I do want to keep some mementos and I don't know where to draw the line. I live in a one bedroomed flat and don't have a lot of space, though I do have a decent sized cubbyhole. I keep a memory box in there and also a box with my dear Mum's things in, she died six years ago and I haven't been able to face going through it before but tonight I took the plunge and went through it. There are things I have thrown away, but there are some things I want to keep, like her jewellery, photos and things she made in the home. Cards however are a problem as there are quite a lot. I have kept the ones from family and from her 80th birthday but there are still quite a few. I don't know whether or not to narrow this down to one card from each family member for each occasion and keep every one.

Also with my own memory box and what to keep. I have old appointment diaries in there going to back to 1998, they are fascinating to look back on but then again I rarely look at them. I have already a few months ago destroyed a lot of hard backed journals (after having them scanned) as they were too negative to keep looking back on and they just got in the way and took up space. I am now keeping a scrapbook visual kind of diary which isn't personal and is a record of things I do along with pictures and things. I do want to keep these as I keep looking back on the one I have on the go at the moment as its so interesting, they are in thin books which won't take up much room as they pile up and I do want to make room for them. So should I hang on to the old appointment diaries? They are a record of my life from back then but still not like the scrapbook. I now keep my appointment diary on my smart phone.

I don't want to throw things out and regret it later.

MrsAtobe

How about scanning the cards and the appointment diaries as well? I'm sue a CD would take up less room than the hard copies, and that way you've will got them to refer to?

ditsykitchen

MrsAtobe wrote: »

How about scanning the cards and the appointment diaries as well? I'm sue a CD would take up less room than the hard copies, and that way you've will got them to refer to?

I've recently taken to doing this too. You can store copies of you files on google drive or similar (online free storage space) so you can access them from any pc and you won't have to burn them onto cds even, so completely clutter-free

Although maybe my pc is a little cluttered...

System

MrsAtobe wrote: »

How about scanning the cards and the appointment diaries as well? I'm sue a CD would take up less room than the hard copies, and that way you've will got them to refer to?

I spent a large part of last week doing this. I'm waiting for a flash drive to be delivered so that I can take them off my pc completely.

Old photos/pictures ive put on an online storage facility set to private. I'll probably back the majority of them up on the flash drive too.

-taff

Thed trouble with storing on a computer, a flash drive, online storage, cd's etc is that they can be corrupted.
If they are really important to you and you want to keep them, keep them in hard copy.
It sounds like you have a hard time parting with physical mementoes of your past.
Ask yourself is it worth keeping to remind yourself of good stuff or bad stuff, it' it's the latter, get rid of them. If ti's the former and you'll regret losing them, put them in a box under your bed...

Citygirl1

Thanks for your replies. I have journals scanned because of storage issues but mainly because of privacy issues. However, I find I never look at them but at least I know they are still there. I feel scanning all the cards and diaries would be very time consuming on my slow flat bed scanner and I would be less inclined to look at them. Most of my photos are on my hard drive and I do look at those. I now have just one album with hard copy photos in from the pre-digital days.

On another point, I love keeping my visual diary but I do miss the journal keeping aswell, in the nice pretty books, but they became full of negativity and ended up being a burden. When I need to vent now I do it on paper and then destroy it or do it on the computer but I still miss my pretty books, however, I don't want the physical journal issue all over again. The visual diaries are another matter though, I feel they need to be physically flipped through and wouldn't be the same scanned.

Gers

I too struggled with this for a good long while - however did eventually scan most things, including photographs. I decided that having them all available didn't necessarily mean that I looked at them so being transferred to technology didn't mean that I didn't care!

Paper copies are 'old technology' and digital is new. Writing and photographs fade away and eventually become just memories of memories. Scanned copies are much more easily read I found.

I keep a back up and back up my back up - not yet convinced of the security and safety of cloud storage systems but I'm sure it will come. Looking at all the old stuff is now so much easier and rewarding.

So, my opinion is do it! But only when you're ready and not because you feel you should. It's an emotional thing. I've still got precious love letters in a bundle which I keep approaching, staring at for a while and then closing the drawer again. Emotions are not yet ready for that step!

miss_scrooge

For the appointment diaries just write down the important things out of it that you need to remember and throw the rest away.Somebody gave me that advice and I haven't got round to throwing my diaries out yet or even writing down the importan tthings.

With cards when my dad died he had lots of cards ones we made etc I just recycled them all that was 5 years ago and don't regret it.The longer you keep things the harder it is.

Citygirl1

Thats interesting about the diaries, a friend of mine once suggested the same thing. However its not just appointments but the actual notes and scribbles in there, the reminders and phone numbers I wrote at the time which somehow wouldn't be the same rewritten but the idea is a good one.

miss_scrooge

Could rip out the important pages and then stick in a box.

nearlyrich

I feel your pain however I am coming to a way of thinking that like many people I keep stuff like cards and never actually look at them, I have culled loads of things I thought I couldn't throw away and the driver for this was sorting through my mum's stuff after she died. I don't want to leave that awful job for my children.