I have boxes full of photographs and photo albums from my sons’ childhood pre-digital years - 1998 through about 2010. My husband in particular took many photos of every activity, and often ordered two sets of prints in case we wanted to send to grandparents, which we hardly ever did. I’m currently going through them and heavily weeding, and shredding the discards. The remainders will be in albums, one per year. My thought process is - DSs have graduated from college, do I need 10 photos of the time they touched a fish in the aquarium touch tank? NO!
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I did this photo weeding a few years ago and it was very satisfying. There were so many repeat shots - I only saved the one where everybody looked good and chucked the others.
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I may resemble your husband! I know I need to throw away about half of them. It’s on my to do list before we ever move.
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I’m only saving the ones where I look good but some of the ones where my kids look goofy or dishelved must be saved for their future partners and children to enjoy!
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Just started this bag “a week”, really big boxes and many bags a month club, as we have a charity that is a conglomerate of other charities that has me on a pickup callback / email once a month. It’s working great, forcing me to have “something” for them I typically have a lot more than I thought I would have. However, I’ve run into the VHS video issue of a million of these videos and my husband was not great and marking them. Some I know were actually our 8mm or 16mm films converted to VHS so we and our parents could watch them, now we have to convert again, but to what??? DVD or some cloud storage? They have to stop the change of technology and leave us something to watch our memories on.
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We took all of our old VHS tapes (and we had the big ones, the small ones, the ones that were my in-laws, and the ones converted from reel to reel tapes) and went through them. Then my husband converted only the best few minutes on each tape to video on his computer. We put those highlights on a private youtube channel and chucked the original tapes. The conversion process involved having a player hooked to a laptop with a very cheap converter device (we got on Amazon)., It took time, but it was well worth it. We now have the highlights only (and some of these highlight snippets are only 10 seconds long). But it is something people can actually look at (we have shared the private youtube link with other family members).
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We no longer have a VHS machine that works and you can’t buy a new one, just have to hope a used one will last. But, I guess that’s what we will have to do. I still think we will need some kind of hard copy - I don’t trust cloud data or YouTube stuff to be around for our grandkids (I don’t have any yet) and these are our memories and family history.
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I am trying to motivate myself to get on some purging. Even though we did our big downsize several years ago, I feel like a yearly, “sweep,” of possessions is a good idea.
I have gone through our bathroom storage today and purged old make-up along with outdated medications, etc.
I am also going through the top drawer of my (large) nightstand. I don’t think I’ve swept through it since we moved in three and half years ago. Very atypical for me, but it was filled to the brim. It holds such a hodge-podge of items, but the main thing that needed to be sorted and culled was old costume jewelry. I have no good organizational system for that at all.
Anyway, neither of those areas made much of a dent, yet it has taken quite a bit of time. I should have started with something bigger rather than something so tedious.
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My husband bought a jacket today - went through his old jackets and have a bag with 4 to give away!
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I’m finally getting rid of some of the stuff above my garage, including sleds, razor scooters, a microscope, a telescope, games, and lots of other random stuff. I put some on our neighborhood page to give away, and I’ve had more taken than I expected.
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I’m slowly going through my clothes (for the 3rd or 4th time since we moved 2 years ago). Every day I do one drawer or section of the closet.
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I made both D20 and D23 go through their closets and drawers during Spring Break(s) and they put together a combined 3 trash bags of garbage and 8 bags of donations.
I keep reminding myself that we are looking for progress, not perfection.
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A local high school is collecting dresses for prom, and a friend is coming tomorrow to collect them. I’m donating the dress I wore to S1’s bar mitzvah in 1999, the dress I wore to S2’s bar mitzvah in 2002, and the dress I wore to S1’s wedding in 2017. I’m keeping the dress I wore to S2’s wedding in 2019; it’s quite wearable again. (Although of course I haven’t worn it since the wedding.)
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This should be the motto of the thread.
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I have an easier time getting rid of things when I know someone else will actually enjoy them.
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Well, the “someone” will be someone I’ll never meet, but I do hope these dresses do someone some good.
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I am perfectly fine with my give-away items helping somebody I’ll never meet. (Though using Buy Nothing etc is fun too). What I want to avoid is a path where the item ends up in landfill, especially if there could have been an eager recipient had I found a different method.
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I totally get that. But sometimes that idea leads me to paralysis and a given item living in my closet for another period of time.
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Well, my three dresses are gone, to be delivered to the HS using them for prom giveaway. I’m relieved. I was sad to see one dress in particular leave – I loved it!! – but I haven’t worn it since 2002, so I think it was time.
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Whatever they put in anesthesia suits me just fine. I am assuming it’s some steroid anti-inflammatory like prednisone, because that’s how I feel. Super manic, happy, no aches. my allergies are gone! I know from experience, it will all be back to normal soon enough, but boy have I been flying around the house making progress. H has been on a roll too.
I went through all my files, shredded and tossed a garbage bag full. I went through a photo cabinet. It’s more organized, but now I have a plan to toss a bunch. It’s mostly the packets of school/soccer pictures. I don’t want to throw everything away, but do I need 30 pictures of the same pose? Can’t 3-5 suffice?
I reorganized our linen closet - the one that holds the files. I found older S’ freshman dorm bedding stuff in a drawer. Don’t need that. I have younger S’ that we use for cabin rentals. With the extra space in the closet, I moved clutter in the corners of the Xbox room (4th bedroom) that was driving me crazy. I went through the butler’s pantry and quickly tossed a bunch of stuff, and I did the same with my nightstand drawer and a couple of other minor areas.
Then I went to the attic. We put all the “to be donated items” in a spot up there. It’s been awhile since we hauled it away. Pulled all that out, along with the stuff I collected today. H got the exercise bike from the shed that we never used. The seat doesn’t go high enough for us. Loaded it up and carted it to goodwill. Then we swung by the car wash and washed/cleaned that out.
There’s still so much we have to do, but it feels amazing to make progress. Of course, I only got 3 hours sleep last night and will probably crash hard eventually, but for now I’m good!
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