What things are you "holding on to" just because.

[DanOregon]

We all have those boxes of things we don't really need or use because throwing them out or giving them away seems unfathomable. Heck, self-storage places seem to be going up faster than houses these days. Curious what people are holding on to, for whatever reason. I have my framed team photos from high school football that I doubt will ever be on a wall again. Some computer printers that work, but I rarely print things anymore. And of course various newspapers from stories I did.
In a sense I guess, we keep these things because they represent "who we are." The products of our lives. Awards, pictures, ticket stubs. Etc. Is the point that when we die those "cleaning up" will gain a better understanding of who we are? Or do we hold on to things because we've always held on to them?

 

[jr/shotglass]

Two weeks ago yesterday, we moved. The previous home was 1,800 square feet; this one is 1,600.

After 33 years in the previous home, yes, we had a LOT of things that didn't need to be in our house anymore, and we spent a lot of moving time taking bags of goods to Goodwill. They can be of use to someone else.

And after getting rid of some of this stuff, it's beginning to look like this house won't be busting at the seams. (Barely.)

 

[MTM]

You nailed it in the final graph. We are holding on to who we were. I've moved three times over the past decade and culled the herd a bit each time, but still have a bunch of Dodgers and Rams game programs I know my son will throw out the day after I die. I also have about 30 years of Street and Smith magazines for all sports. I've tossed many of my old articles and clippings.
My girlfriend has been cleaning her house and throwing out a lot of sentimental items, high school band photo, grandma's old candlesticks, etc. I need to do the same.

 

[MisterCreosote]

I think I have the largest remaining VHS collection in the country.

I’ve saved a whole attic’s worth of stuff from my kids, even though they’re only 12 and 9. I’ll need a separate house for it all by the time they move out.

 

[Gym Beam]

We have a house full of four generations worth of collectibles and other stuff. I think about trying to go through it every once in a while, but then decide it's not worth the effort. It's not bothering me, so I will leave it alone

 

[Inky_Wretch]

All my clips and awards.

Various sized nuts and bolts and screws because “you never know!”

Some lawnmower parts - even though I don’t own a lawnmower right now - for the same reason.

Random keys that don’t fit a single lock in my house.

 

[Here me roar]

I have two boxes of stuff from my life. Meaningless to anyone but me. But I never had a place to put it. It used to be eight boxes, So I did over the years weed it out. It's just stuff I have with me. I go through it rarely. But it's a treasure trove of memories really.

 

[dixiehack]

Books
Outdated electronics and cords. I threw out a box full of cables to long-lost devices the other month. I could probably fill another one
Books
Souvenir stadium cups. Probably going to have to break down and class up the glassware if things stay on their current trajectory and I start getting company over.
Books
An ugly rocking chair with a bicentennial design that needs the seat replaced. My grandmother bought that rocker to have something to rock me in right after I was born. It isn’t going anywhere.
Books
An obscene amount of loose papers “that might be important someday.”
Books
Spare tables and camp chairs from when I was married and we sometimes tailgated.
Books

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

I'll let you know by MLB Opening Day. I swear this is the winter I clean the basement. We'll see if it happens!

 

[Sam Mills 51]

I wouldn't say I'm "holding on to," but if I end up outliving my mother, the one thing I'm taking to put in my house is a clock that has gone up in the last seven houses of hers. It's not that it's an antique or particularly valuable, but that the manufacturer easily identifies with us. Also got a great story out of it when I had it restored when we were in Fort Collins.

But, for the most part, I do try to think about the poor people having to do this sort of stuff behind me when the time comes. I have some stuff, but it's all in 3-4 plastic bins in my spare room.

 

[MisterCreosote]

We recently downsized my mom into a 1-bedroom apartment from a 3-bedroom townhouse with a huge basement.

During that time, she’d call me with questions like, “Do you want your third-quarter report card from second grade?”

I’m at the point now where I have everything I need to properly remember my parents, and the rest can be tossed.

It’ll be interesting to see how my kids are when that time comes, because they’ve definitely inherited my mom’s pack rat genes.

 

[MTM]

I'm thinking my son will throw everything away without a thought. He has little sentiment. When we were packing for a move, he didn't understand why his mom, then in her 40s, would be keeping paraphernalia from when she was a competitive swimmer as a kid.

 

[Driftwood]

Do your family a favor. Get rid of random "stuff."
I think I started culling my own "stuff" back during COVID because I knew some day I'd move. I no longer needed my third grade report card or a ticket stub from a race at North Wilkesboro in 1978.
I still have plenty of things that have actual meaning to me like pictures and nicknacks that someone will have to deal with some day, but it's out on display or in use. If it's something in a box that hasn't seen the light of day in decades, get rid of it.
I have allowed myself one tote to keep "stuff" that I'm just not ready to part with such as my dad's ID badge from work, etc. I have told my nephew that when I'm gone, throw the tote away. Don't even open it. There is nothing in there of any value or meaning to any other human on this planet besides me. If it fits in there, I can keep it. If not, get rid of it.

Like @Inky_Wretch said, I do keep random screws and such because they might come in handy. Just yesterday, I bought a hook at Walmart to go in my closet. I didn't like the screws that came with it and substituted them for others I had. I put the factory screws in my loose hardware box because I might use them for something else.

 

[UNCGrad]

I think my kid starting her life - beginning with college and now a few months after graduation - with an apartment with two others in Brooklyn might help her not be the pack rat her mom (and I guess me, too) has/have been over the years. She has no room to keep anything.

 

[BurnsWhenIPee]

But, for the most part, I do try to think about the poor people having to do this sort of stuff behind me when the time comes.

That's where I've been at lately, and it is driving me to really whittle things down. I'm really getting in my head about a lot of it, because our adult son is not nostalgic at all - if he has something he hasn't used in a year, it's into the trash/recycling/resale shop.

Our daughter is showing signs of being pack rat-like in regards to anything that has any history or family connection. But the vision of her having to go through boxes and boxes of things when my wife and I are gone, making decisions in the wake of our death, doesn't make me happy. I need to make a lot of those decisions for her while we're still around.

 

[Oggiedoggie]

My mom is moving from a house to an apartment in her senior complex. She’s about a two hour drive from us. A couple of weekends ago I took a look in her attic and ended up returning to our house with nine banker’s boxes. Tuesday, I took 280 pounds of old financial and medical records to a shredding center. Non sensitive paper went to recycling. There’s still four boxes with old photos and family letters to go through. And there’s still more in left in her house.

That’s sparking an urge to cull what I have socked away. I’m better than I was; I used to save everything I had published. Work at daily newspapers in the print era before the turn of the century quickly built a monster stack. That’s gone and digital files take less physical space, but they’ve got to be curated or it’s just an overwhelming mess.

I do save screws and other fasteners. Seems wasteful to just pitch them. I have a detached workshop where they go, but they’re in such disorder that I wind up going to the hardware store when I need something quickly because it’s tough to find what I need in all the drawers and boxes. Of course the “building centers” only sell fasteners in quantities more than I need at the moment, to the extras add to the pile. They seem to take forever to compost.

I need to institute a rule that, if I don’t touch something for a year, there’d better be a very good reason why I don’t sell it, donate it or throw it away.

 

[SixToe]

We are packrats, due to our parents being packrats due to their parents being Depression-era "save EVERYthing, wash and resuse plastic bags and all tinfoil, save every nut-bolt-screw-wire, and keep every plastic container even if it's not by-God Tupperware" people.

Our kids, ages 30 and 28, thankfully are minimalists. If our son buys or gets a new t-shirt, he tosses two. If he gets some new running socks, he tosses 2-3 of the oldest. Our daughter in NYC lives in a comfortable but small condo and is an uber-minimalist. Neither of them want the stuff that was given to us by parents and grandparents, although it's old and cool. They also don't want the old dance team photos and yearbooks, or the box of youth league baseball trophies or things like that.

We have high school yearbooks we haven't cracked in 25 years, Encyclopedia Brittanica from the 1960s and 70s (worthless), old newspaper clips and issues dating to the 80s, and a ****load of stuff in the garage and attics. A lot of that needs to be tossed out or donated to library book sales or other.

I also have a handmade wooden cradle dating to the 1870s, an old wall crank telephone from the 1800s, my grandmother's still usable treadle Singer sewing machine (which some Wannabe TradWife probably would buy), and other family stuff that can't just be tossed or donated willy-nilly.

It's an ongoing project. And we still have both sets of parents with their houses (and my dad's outbuilding AND garage) absolutely full of stuff. In my dad's garage upstairs (!!!) he has some old furniture, like 40-yo or more, and always says "It's still good, someone might be able to use it." He fishes and has clods of spinnerbaits and crankbaits but "They're still good, they just need new skirts and blades." Mom-in-law has been a lifelong collector and has a great artistic eye. But her house is full of clumps of brass from the 1970s Middle East, Hummel figurines and other pottery, 50-yo books she won't donate "because you or the kids might want them" and other stuff. She was a pastel painter but doesn't anymore, and her upstairs studio is a nightmare.

Neither will agree to cleaning-tossing anything now. I get that because it's yet another sign of the imminent end. But holy ****balls ... those cleanups will be "Get a dumpster, get to work," and I'm close to doing that with our stuff here, too.

 

[BrownScribe]

Not to be morbid, but since I was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer earlier this year, I've been on a purge. Material things just don't matter anymore. Been giving away a lot of stuff to my friends and their kids, such as clothes and baseball cards.

Plus, my Dad was a major hoarder and I experienced firsthand how much of a pain it was going through his stuff after he passed. It took a few years and a lot of his friends' help to get the property cleaned up again.

I want to make sure that when I die, my wife and family have very little to deal with as possible.

 

[ChrisLong]

Part of this is what kind of mood you're in when you go through stuff. If you're in a sentimental mood, you keep it; if not, pitch it.

My dad did some clearing out, I was busy and said I didn't care. So into the trash went all of my report cards and school photos up through junior high. (I had the yearbooks with me and I still have them).
Then, shortly after he died, cleaning out his house, my brother's wife said something that pissed me off (happens a lot). Put me in an "I don't care" mood. All I wanted was his TV, nothing else. This TV was nothing special, a medium-size off-brand (Insignia) that is now more than 15 years old and still has a great picture.
I've got stuff in boxes. I only kept one box of sports memorabilia (media guides, scorebooks, credentials) and I had access to a ton. most of that stuff is 40 years old. I have a box of old softball jerseys. Hats, I bet we all have dozens of hats. In my desk is a drawer with clips and xeroxes of some of my favorite stories. I kept them in case I had to apply for a job, I could include them with my resume. Now I've been retired for 11 years and still have them in my desk.

Sometimes I think I gotta clear out this stuff. Other times I think it will be my daughter's problem since she will get the house when I'm gone.

 

[Gym Beam]

Somewhat spurred on by this thread today I have had a bout of clearing my shelves in one part of my home office. Through the past 30 years I have kept every box for every piece of tech I bought (enough to buy a yacht or two), as well as the manuals. Most of those are in the recycling bin now. If I don't still have the device, why do I need the box and manual?