Thoughts on mementos

[da]

Yesterday when I was sorting through papers in a Sudafed haze, I took a few moments to re-read some of the letters I sent when I was in school. The most fun one was a pissed-off letter to Chase Bank on the resolution of a credit-report mistake, but it was also fun to find the letter I sent Cornell's library asking forgiveness concerning fees to replace two books which were stolen from my dad's truck on a trip to NYC (the fines were waived).

dawn_guy pointed me at unclutterer, which has a recent article, What does it mean to ‘honor’ mementos?

This is an interesting and relevant question for me. I would like to do something with my crate of letters, cards and other paper mementos. I like the idea of browsing them every once in a while; and a crate is not really the most suitable way to browse them without damaging them. Scrapbooking is a scarily-obsessive hobby, or at least it is rather dominated by people who seems obsessively scary. (Also, would I sort theatre and concert tickets into a binder of their own, or mix them in with other ephemera by date?... Such questions to obsess over! I just don't have time!)

Perhaps there's a digital form of preservation that doesn't feel time-wasting or obsessive. I haven't come to any conclusions here, but I'm curious if this is something you've come to peace with.

melted_snowball is much less sentimental than I am. And I'm sentimental about a wider range of stuff. Neither of us are "right" and I don't think we're incompatibly different about this. But it does seem to come to a head with magazines from *mumble* months ago that I've not gotten around to reading and electronics I might fix.

I just unsubscribed from Linux Journal (for a few reasons- including the fact that they run terrible sexist ads, but also because I haven't really read any of the last six issues). I've tossed the tape-eating VCR that was sitting in the closet. d. was, I think rightfully, a bit miffed that I had kept it around. If you knew his father moved 800 boxes of stuff from Cortland to Long Island, including boxes they hadn't opened in over 20 years, you'd probably see his point. And I do.

And it is quite gratifying to lighten the load, especially if it includes truly accepting my limitations. ("I'll never be good enough at micro-soldering to fix that headphone cable satisfactorily. And that's OK.")

A few years ago I tossed the crushed pair of black crushed velvet high heel pumps that were given to me by my friend Arlene for my first time to see the live stage show of Rocky Horror at Risley Hall at Cornell. Partly I wish I'd kept the shoes, even though they looked awful. Or, maybe that's really a feeling of regret I'd not treated them better.

Comments

[okoshun.livejournal.com]

Scrapbooking is a scarily-obsessive hobby, or at least it is rather dominated by people who seems obsessively scary.

I've thought about scrapbooking from time to time - putting together nice volumes of my memorabilia, but damn, that stuff is expensive. Those obsessive people have driven up the prices on everything! It would be a nice way to present my stuff though.

I've thought about going through, picking out key items, taking pictures of the ones that I'm about to throw away so that at least I have a visual memory (and it's much easier to store) and then putting together a few tidy scrapbooks with things that mean a lot. Like epi_lj's anniversary cards.

Perhaps there's a digital form of preservation that doesn't feel time-wasting or obsessive. I haven't come to any conclusions here, but I'm curious if this is something you've come to peace with.

I don't think that pictures or scans of items really do most things justice justice.

I still have a big old box of "stuff" that I can't get rid of. And more "stuff" that's hanging around up here and not in the storage locker that need to be added to said box. I've managed to keep it to a single box (well, large rubbermaid container), but even so, that's still quite a bit.

[alltoocozy.livejournal.com]

I liked Robert's reply in the Unclutterer thread. It accords with a suggestion I read in some organization book somewhere that it's fine to have mementos, but choose them deliberately, store or display them with care, and if you store them, go through them (adding or subtracting to them) periodically. Otherwise what's the point of keeping them? But piles of unsorted Stuff are Not Good.

I'm not there yet, but I'm getting there -- I also tend not to be particularly sentimental about many things, so I have less trouble than some (aka my spouse *ahem**) with just tossing stuff.