I imagine being an old lady looking through old pictures. I want to keep the them. Kids can throw them out.

Keep photos of yourself and nothing else. Kids and grandkids will be interested in photos.

Your childhood Girl Scout council might be interested in your old badges. Many councils have a historical society.

My solution was to get a binder, load it with page protectors and make a scrap book. Certificates, letters, report cards, cut up yearbook to save only a few specific pages. Then took pictures of the rest. My kids love to flip thru it. I have added a few new things, concert/movie tickets, typed trip itineraries, made a few journal type entries. Did the same with my husband’s boxes of stuff. It’s also how I kept my girls mementoes, they each have 2 binders, birth thru elementary, middle school thru college.

The one box of stuff I put together before I moved out for good at 22 never made it out of my mom's basement - my troll of a sister lives there now and probably threw it away.

I think it had my HS yearbooks, HS diploma, graduation program and some grad awards, my middle school track ribbons (lol), some school newspapers, my beat up old Star Wars figures and some of my old cassettes that I couldn't part with at the time. Can't say I'm really missing any of this stuff. I pulled it out for my kids many years ago so at least they got to marvel at the perms and vertical bangs that were so prevalent in the class of 1990.

I currently have some similar boxes of my kids' stuff in the attic until they're permanently settled somewhere.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.countryliving.com/home-maintenance/cleaning/a45190/what-is-swedish-death-cleaning/

Did you read this article? They suggest bring things you don’t want to your friends’ houses when you visit. I would stop being friends with anyone who did that to me.

Op - throw it out. If the Smithsonian hasn’t called you by now looking for your memorabilia, they won’t be. EVER.

I am 55 and just brought some letters a friend wrote me in college to her house. It was wonderful. She talked about meeting her now husband in one. We complained about our parents. Talked about college events long forgotten. I don't keep everything but some.

Anonymous wrote:https://www.countryliving.com/home-maintenance/cleaning/a45190/what-is-swedish-death-cleaning/

Did you read this article? They suggest bring things you don’t want to your friends’ houses when you visit. I would stop being friends with anyone who did that to me.

Op - throw it out. If the Smithsonian hasn’t called you by now looking for your memorabilia, they won’t be. EVER.

Your kids certainly won't regret it if you throw away all that stuff.

All? No. A few things, yes. Finally let go of my cheerleading pom poms. Have kept pictures of old boyfriends, miixed-in with pictures of others to give me some deniability

the self-storage industry is crazy in this country I wonder how many people really know what they HAVE in them??

Only things I kept from my childhood was my first I can read book....the Fire Cat and Never Talk to Strangers and my fisher price record player ....I also kept my kids ceramic ash tray and bird house they made me in elementary school and their hand prints from kindergarten and one report card. I have a box of photo albums but that's it, they are memory enough and I plan to digitize many of them as a gift for my Mom at some point.

I'm on team throw.

I don't get the people who cart around junk from house to house for years and years. Especially if you aren't looking at it, its just in a basement somewhere.

Go through everything. Is there anything special enough that you'd want to display it? If so, keep it! Display it! See it daily and let it remind you of whatever it was. But to keep shit in a dusty box in a basement? Nah, toss.

Our past is part of who we are. And so are our memories. You can focus on the present while remembering the past. And I am sentimental about certain things.

I would scale down to the most important things and would keep the rest.

Anonymous wrote:Take photos of everything. Then you can look at the photos if you want.

You could even make a Shutterfly book of the photos.