Toss, Toss, Toss

It's the third month of the year, and I'm decluttering and organizing a third room in the basement of our house.  It's the most difficult one yet, because the room is the office, which is used for so many things.

One wall is lined with bookshelves. A second wall holds Hubby Tony's desk and a large filing cabinet. Across from that is a smaller desk that holds the printer.  (Its drawers are filled with miscellaneous cords and old software boxes.) My sewing area is along the fourth wall. The corners of the room hold milk crates, boxes, and other 'stuff'.

I started with the bookshelves.  A couple of years ago I'd purged some of the books,, but now I was ready to make another pass. I went through and made a pile of things to donate (and made Tony do the same). Soon most of the shelves were looking tidy. However, several shelves of one of the bookshelves held photo boxes and old albums that needed to be culled through.

I've never been the world's greatest photographer. Back in the days of film that meant for each roll of 24 photos there might be a couple of excellent ones and a handful of acceptable ones. The rest were too dark, too blurry, or poorly composed. I felt guilty about throwing them away, so they all ended up in boxes. However, now I was determined.

I tackled the four boxes in chronological order. Some images were easy to get rid of. If we had
two dozen photos of the same event I only kept the best ones. Same with pictures of scenery. If the photo was an unflattering image it got tossed.  I tried to ask myself if anyone would want to see the photo (other than Tony and me) twenty years from now.  In the end I had half as many pictures. Not all of them are great, but all of them bring back memories.

With that done it was time to tackle the albums.  Most of them had been my mom's, filled with the Polaroids she was so fond of taking.  Sadly, most of them were faded and stuck to the adhesive album pages. I was able to salvage a couple of family events, but didn't feel at all guilty tossing out the ones of her work colleagues, people I'd never met.

I still have a little more work to go, but I'm pleased with  the results so far.  The shelves look much neater, and it's easy to find things.  Now to tackle another part of the room.....

Five years ago today: Sharing Local Information