Sorry I’m a bit late with Week 41’s topic. We were traveling this weekend back to New York to see my family and run in the Rock ‘N’ Roll 10K in Brooklyn. Yesterday (Monday) was a huge catch-up day at work and after work, well, I think this week’s topic pretty much explains for itself what I was doing ALL NIGHT after work yesterday, haha, and why I didn’t have a chance to do this then. Without further ado, here’s this week’s topic. Leave your responses in the comments! 🙂
“Things you should throw away but can’t.”
This week’s topic is topical, haha. Just ask the big piles of crap that are still sitting around in boxes, needing to be thrown away or donated, but realistically, will get put away in storage because I can’t bring myself to justify getting rid of them yet.
So I started going through some of these boxes at my parents’ house this past weekend and let me tell you – I’m not a hoarder, but I am definitely not someone who throws things out. I take after my grandfather. My grandma has taken on the never-ending task of going through all my grandpa’s old files and she’s found receipts from their first house that are 48 years old! Grandma is a person who throws things out when she’s done with them; Grandpa held onto them for “just in case” reasons. Every time my grandma went on a cleaning out binge, my grandpa would call my mom and go, “You’re mother is throwing things out again. You better come claim anything you want quickly.” Ah, good times.
Anyway, I’ve been starting to go through boxes and there have been things I’ve thrown out or put in a box to donate, but a lot of it, I can’t bring myself to toss yet. For instance, I have old scripts and programs from my MCCTA days (Marist College Council on Theatre Arts) and old papers that I wrote in college. I tossed some stuff, but it’s been a tough process. I think I’ll have to take baby steps and revisit everything twice a year. I’m going to need the storage space; it’s pointless to have a nice, big new house if I’m filling up all the free space with old crap. But, the case can be made that a lot of that stuff has sentimental value and I had a blast looking through it the past few days and taking a trip down memory lane. After all, that’s why I kept a lot of it in the first place, right? Because much of that stuff defines a big part of my life and who I used to be.
Here’s part of our new storage area that Jay set up that houses my boxes for the time being:
However, the boxes from the basement that are currently taking up the most real estate in our storage area are old books that I had growing up. I’m talking boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes of old Babysitters’ Club, Sweet Valley (Twins, High, University, etc.), Nancy Drew (both regular and the On Campus series), etc. You name it and I probably had it growing up. I was a big reader as a kid. Grandpa used to take us to Borders’ Books once a week after Sunday dinners and let us pick a book to read for the week. I used to even take a ton out of the library, too. The amount of books that I had was ridiculous. Most of those books really should be donated. I can probably get rid of over 100 Tween/Young Adult books and give another child the chance to enjoy them. But, part of me really hopes that much like I enjoyed reading my mom’s old hardcover Nancy Drew books as a child, I can share my gazillion serialized girl-targed books with my own daughter some day. That’s silly, I know, especially in the age of Amazon Kindles where my possible future daughter could probably buy the entire series digitally for $10 some day, lol. Still, I just can’t seem to part with them yet.
Here’s one of a million boxes of the books of my tween-hood:
Blerg. I know, I can never say a word about Jay’s mancave collection ever again.
What about you? What are some things you should throw away but can’t? Let me know in the comments section!
