Stuff & Things

Memory clutter and organization

I'm a sentimental fool. I tend to forget all but the deepest hurts, so I'm frequently afflicted with nostalgia. I feel the need to keep photos, journals, school papers, and the like. Now that I'm an unclutterer, a disciple of Peter Walsh, I've been thinking more about how to preserve, honor, and store my forms of nostalgia.

Photographs: I am scanning old photos to create a digital archive. Not only will this enable me to share the photos easily with family and friends, but I can create photo books instead of traditional photo albums (which is something I find very tedious). Brilliant! I'm not sure how much "space" my photo project will take, so I'm going to use a 250 GB portable hard drive to start.

Journals: Thanks once again to a timely post on Unclutterer, I have some food for thought on this one. I have long intended to scan or re-type some of my old journals. I think once I've been through that process, I will better know whether I want to keep any of the originals (pages or books). I know there are a few more artistic journals (collage style) that I'd like to keep, but I think it will depend on their content to some degree.

Other memoirs: I'm not sure how to handle. I need to find time to go through it all and determine which pieces are truly meaningful. Then I can figure out if I need a keepsake box or a scrapbook of some kind. My mom has a couple of scrapbooks from her youth that I enjoyed looking at when I was younger and will hopefully get to enjoy sharing with my daughter.

I think that you should save some things for yourself and future generations, just not too much. You can't let the "things" overpower your life in the here and now. As Peter Walsh always says, your things and home should all work togehter to help you live the life you want. It's important to keep this in mind when dealing with clutter, even (or especially) the emotional/nostalgic kind.