What to do with old diaries?

[Anonymous]

I kept a diary almost every day in high school and college. I've held on to them with the idea that my daughters might enjoy reading them someday. I also had considered donating them to my college, since I know first-person accounts can be valuable documents for historical research. I recently started rereading them and I'm horrified. Shallow, conceited, mean-spirited. By today's standards, racist and homophobic. They don't reflect the person I thought I was; nor the person I am today. I would be embarrassed for anyone to read them.
Do I just toss them? If you were a diary keeper, did you hold onto your diaries, and if so, do you have any plans for their future?

[Anonymous]

Throw them away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Throw them away.

+1

[Anonymous]

If your interest is oto keep them as a historical document it shouldn’t be trashed as your views were in part a product of the times. if you don’t want antibody to ever see them just trash them.

[Anonymous]

Before you throw them away, please post some of your entries here so we can enjoy them together.

[Anonymous]

I shredded 20 years of mine when I was pregnant. I had thought they were just accounts of my life but I was cleaning one day and realized something similar to you, OP. It was like a really messed up therapy session but recorded on paper for anyone to read.

I switched to a line-a-day ones and just do factual reporting now.

[Anonymous]

Burn them

[Anonymous]

Recycle them. No one wants them. Why would your kids even want to read them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Recycle them. No one wants them. Why would your kids even want to read them?

My daughter LOVED reading the diary I was keeping when I was dating her dad, got pregnant with her and wrestled with the decision of whether or not to go through with the pregnancy and my feelings right after she was born.

[Anonymous]

I burned mine—my teen DD found them and read my racy 20s and early marriage I believe. She denies it. But to be safe burned

[Anonymous]

I plan to shred mine. It’s hard though, in large part because I’m the only one left from my family of origin. The diaries provide helpful and healthy validation— since there’s no one I can talk to about their own perspectives re: what my family was like. At the same time, I’ve read little from people who could write about historical events in DC from perspectives and experiences that overlap with my own.

[Anonymous]

You could probably donate them to the special collections of your college/university archives. If you do that you can restrict access to them for 50 years so that you will be long gone when researchers read them.

(I'm a historian and I use a lot of diaries in my work. They are an amazing resource.)

[Anonymous]

Another vote for burn

[Anonymous]

Buy a good shredder and use it!

[Anonymous]

If you really wanted to keep them (I don't know why though) you can just scan the pages and then toss them away.