No dear, I don't want to throw that away...

I turned my credentials into a framed, poster-sized collage which hangs in the kitchen. At least once a year I take it down, add new stuff, and generally rearrange it. It's bright, colorful, and attracts a surprising amount of attention from my very few houseguests.

That said, I have way too much stuff in a very small apartment (and, like Beef03, some more stuff at my mom's house). Whenever I have to move, I will likely fill a dumpster.

 

Yes, you are a pack rat.

There's not anything necessarily wrong with that, but you are. You're keeping stuff that is objectively of very little value to anyone else.

I kept four boxes of media guides and programs from my last job in journalism. All perfect condition. All major conference stuff. Heisman guides, bowl guides, etc. Finally got tired of the space they were taking up and tried to sell them on Craigs List and at our local eBay dropoff. They were virtually worthless.

I should have chucked 'em a while ago. Glad I finally did.

 

My wife used to complain about the three - only three - medium-sized boxes full of Billboard magazines that I'd saved over the years. They honestly didn't take up that much space.

I joked with her that I'd had those magazines since long before I met her, and I'd still have them long after she was gone.

She's been gone coming up four years, and I still have the magazines. Billboard FTW.

 

Ouch...that's hilarious though!

 

I have two boxes of old papers that I will not throw away. They have my clips from college through 2005 which was when I stopped saving my clips.

Last summer I threw out a ton of media guides that I had saved over the years. They filled three recycling bins.

 

I've been throwing out a ton of clothes over the last few months. I've moved a few times since college, like most of us have, and every move is a total ordeal because of all the shit I've kept over the years. Once I got married, it got even worse because now there is two people's shit.

It is really liberating to throw away clothes, even though they aren't that heavy for the next move.

I'm torn about the old Sports Illustrateds and such because I feel like my sons will be excited to look through those when they are old enough to appreciate them. I remember how fun it was for me to find my dad's stash of early-to-mid-1970s SI's. Same thing with some of my media guides and programs.

One problem is I have a ton of books and a ton of CDs (probably about 2,000). Both of them are very heavy when boxed, display well, and seem to have some value.

 

Heresy. Component is the only way to go.

 

Very nice. I'm gonna do the same with my concert/sporting event tickets. I have a bunch dating back to 98 at my parents' from when I still lived in the Midwest and a shoebox full from after I moved to DC. I counted them up one night, I had 100 at my parents and 200 from my DC time. I don't even want to think about the money spent on such.

 

I hate accumulating shit. Was on the right track until we bought our current house. Now, I have way more shit than I really want, but hell, you gotta furnish the place, right?

100 percent chance we hire movers next time. We'd have to. Way too much furniture that I ain't lifting and moving. Fuck that.

 

I used to keep every magazine that came into the house. Never went back and looked at any of them. The only ones I keep around now are the current year's worth of Esquire and the set of daily SIs from the one Olympics I covered. Other stuff ... I've got a couple of press plates and a couple of page negatives from one of my early stops and a box full of credentials. After seven moves in 15 years, I got pretty unsentimental about a lot of stuff I had kept. After we'd been in our house about a year, I cleaned out the garage and threw a way a ton of stuff.

I remembered an old thread on here where we debated the ethical aspects of selling media guides. I had boxes full of 'em and can't for the life of me understand why anyone would buy them.

 

That's what you people get for acquiring things.