Getting rid of s***

I’ve been going through boxes of old stuff I had in storage. I realized that I didn’t need to be paying someone else a bunch of money to keep my junk in air-conditioned comfort, so I brought the boxes home and I’ve been trying to get rid of as much as possible.

None of this stuff is of value to anyone but me, and most of it isn’t even of value to me anymore. I’ve found stuff from college, high school and earlier. Much of it comes from events I can barely remember, and some I’ve totally forgotten. I assume this stuff was important once, but there’s no need to keep it now.

Even though I tell myself that and I logically know that most of my stuff really doesn’t even have sentimental value, I have a hard time throwing old things out. I feel bad getting rid of things which have been sitting around for 10, 15 or more years, just because they were once important to me. It’s like they start to take on some kind of sacred antiqueness, a sense of holiness, just because they’re from a past time in my life that I can never get back to.

Why should things be kept around just because they’re old? I’m not sure of the answer to that, but I keep having this nagging feeling that they should. That it would be a mistake to get rid of them.

Fortunately, I’ve gotten a lot better as surpressing that irrational feeling lately and I’ve been dumping things like there’s no tomorrow. I’ve filled up the recycling bin with papers and lab notebooks from college and loaded up the trash can with ancient training manuals and even petrified Hershey’s kisses.

I did keep my junior high yearbooks. That may turn out to be the real mistake.