Do you/how do you get rid of old letters, tapes, etc...

[Tranquility7]

I'm trying to purge our lives of the bazillion bits of clutter we have.  But it is hard.  I'm not really a packrat, but I do have sentimental attachments to some things.  I have tons of letters from my childhood and later... one part of me wants to pitch them, not only because of the clutter but also because some of the content is just embarrassing (nothing really tawdry, but just immature and *really* stupid - I mean really!).  I'd be embarrassed if I died and my kids read them!!!!  But for some reason I don't really want to let them go either.  Why????

 

And then there are the cassette tapes.... probably at least 300 of them!  I *loved* all that music at various times.  But they are cassettes, for crying out loud.  Why am I having trouble pitching them?!  It's not like I really want to listen to them (or that I even could, since I don't have a cassette player!).

 

I also have about 200 CDs, but those are easier to pitch since I can just rip them onto my computer first, so even though I'm tossing the CD, I still have the music.  But the cassettes... *sigh*.  Especially goofy mixed tapes my bf made me in high school.... LOL!!!!!   Why am I so sentimental about all this stuff?  And how can I just convince myself to toss it all??

[GailV]

Keep the letters.  Seal them in a box, if you need to.  Really.  My best friend from high school committed suicide, and I treasure having those old letters now.

 

Also keep the mix tapes.

 

Any cassettes that you purchased, toss.

[amyco]

For me, it was hard to pitch that stuff because those things reminded me of the life I once had before marriage and children...when so many things were possible, when I really thought I was cool (maybe I was!), and it helped me to feel young again.  Now I'm older and cynical and set in my ways.  I did keep one mix tape, though.  I have to be honest, sometimes I wish I had some of those letters back...I guess you have to ask yourself, is getting rid of the clutter worth more than the reason you are holding on to it?

 

 

[TrixieB]

If the mix tapes are meaningful to you, keep them.  You can probably get a cassette player at Goodwill for a few bucks.  Then you can enjoy the tapes. 

 

Same thing with the letters.  They sound like they are meaningful to you.  Put them in a box where you can get to them when you want to re-read them, but out of reach of the kids if you don't want your kids to read them.  Maybe label the box "extra bras" or something lol.

 

The CDs -- if there are any that you love and that would be $$ to replace, you might want to hang onto those.  Unless you back up your hard drive regularly...

 

I do wish I'd kept some old letters from some of my long-time pen pals, but there was someone in my life at that time (not dh!) that I didn't want to read the letters, so I tossed them.  I should have stored them somewhere instead.

[texasmama]

I have old letters from middle school, in addition to a journal I kept from middle school and high school.  I have a "book" I started writing about my senior year in high school and my freshman year in college.  Talk about embarrassing!

 

I've thought of ditching them, but I can't seem to do that.  They don't take up much room, though.  Just a couple of boxes.  I have gotten rid of the vast majority of my cassette tapes.

 

My senior year of high school I burned love letters from an old boyfriend which were really beautifully written.  I wish I had not done that.  It was symbolic, you know. 

 

Every few years I do go through some amount of paper clutter momentos, though, and each time I can let go of a bit more of it.  I do keep a Nike box full of middle school "notes" folded in that little way that you folded notes.  I am still in contact with many of the people I wrote back and forth with. 

[Stars]

When my grandparents were downsizing to a smaller house and had to seriously purge their stuff, they sat down together and reread all their old love letters to each other and then burned them so no one else could read them.  It seemed sad to me at the time, but I can understand their reasoning.

[HomeschoolMamaOfTwo]

I would let it all go.  In fact, I recently did, and it feels pretty freeing!  I also had a lot of floppy disks with pictures and various info on them (my first digital camera used floppy disks for storage... before memory cards).  I don't even have a computer that would be able to get that stuff off of them if I wanted, so I let all those go as well.  For me, I don't miss them, but if you think you will, then find a safe place to store them.  It won't matter if your kids read them when you die, you will be dead and so you won't care. :)  (I mean that in a humorous way, hope it comes across that way!)  Good luck!

[texasmama]

Also, I have difficulty just throwing things in the trash.  I give them to people I know or to charity.  Then I don't have to throw them away.  (Speaking of things like cassette tapes.)

[Calm37]

I haven't done it yet, but I think it's pretty easy to record cassettes onto the computer, too. Don't you just need to buy a quarter inch jack to quarter inch jack wire and then hook the cassette player from the headphone jack to your computer's mic jack? Well, I have quite a collection of kids book tapes I'd like to record.

 

[Jackie]

How many letters are we talking about here? A shoebox worth of sentimental letters I could see keeping. Anything more than that, no way. Scan them into your computer, save them on a flash drive for backup, and recycle the paper.

 

I would toss purchased cassette tapes. The mix tapes I would listen to, make a list of favorite songs and then recreate a couple good "memory lane" playlists from iTunes.

[nd293]

Scan the letters you really want to keep and save them to disk. That's a practical solution. I don't really have this problem, though, as I tend to think it's important to focus on the moment, and not be sentimental for the past. I do think that letting go of childhood things is part of the process of growing up and accepting the reality of who we are, rather than the might-have-beens. But maybe that's just because I don't have crazy-happy memories of childhood or school-days - not bad, just not wonderful.

 

As for the cassettes, I'd identify the songs I really, really liked on each one, make a list, and slowly buy digital copies of just those songs, or even make a YouTube playlist for those nostalgic moments. Although I let go of the cassettes, CD's etc many moves ago, I have done this from memory, and love listening to those special songs occasionally. A couple of years ago, once we were settled in Australia (our second international move) I made a list of books I recall loving as a teen and young adult - I ended up buying 6 or 7 books, and once or twice a year I pull them out to reread bit.

 

ETA: It's helpful to remember that in the digital age, more and more "things from the past" are easily available. Many older books are easy to get through AbeBooks and old music is digitized. We don't lose stuff forever when we throw it away any more! Dh recently mentioned a radio programme he watched as a child in South Africa, in about 1970, andI was able to track down 20 episodes. It's kind of crazy, but rather wonderful.