by Don Kwikshot

Created on: March 20, 2009

"Much have I travelled in the realms of gold...."

Just as there seems to be a great deal to be said about this subject, or there wouldn't be so many articles on it! I recently had to down-size my home considerably and spent many hours wading through piles of old letters, photos, albums, and papers. In the end I realised the truth in this very simple piece of advice:

"If you haven't looked at it, opened it, noticed it, or used it in the last three months, throw it out!"

And there's your answer in a nutshell. Good advice if you can take it.

There were letters, all very revealing, from as far back as 1942; there were photos from the 1920s; there were classic books which had been read again and again and probably would never again be opened; there were clothes which had gone out of fashion twenty years previously; there were bags of dressmaking materials - all useless bits; there were old broken ornaments, memories of some long-forgotten holiday; there were theatre programmes from shows that we have utterly forgotten; there were old railway tickets, opera tickets, plane tickets; there were old bits of knitting which would never be finished, and there were piles and piles of diaries which would never be read; the list is endless.

This is the kind of clutter that we, in our fear that we might need something at some future date, can never quite bring ourselves to throw out. We treasure our memories. keep our documents, and generally amass an enormous amount of junk in our lives - and this junk is meaningless to anyone else. Yet our real memories are in our heads. It's quite amazing how, once you try and concentrate, you can smell, see, and hear things from even fifty years ago which can never be reduced to paper, and this is where our memories really lie.

After all, who on earth wants to read that on March 24th 1944 you went shopping and bought half a dozen eggs? Who wants to look at grandma's photo album fron 1931, unless it's to laugh at the hats? Who cares that you won a cup for the most sales of an artificial sweetener in 1968? No-one but yourself.

Consider those who will come after you, and who will have to sort out your mess. They don't want most of the stuff that you have so ardently collected - it has no value or meaning for them, so be ruthless and brave; get out the rubbish bags and have a ball!

Unfortunately these things die with us, but they are often meaningless to those who are left to clear up the mess. So get rid of all the junk and go forth, lighter and happier, to the next stage of life!

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