As you can tell, my bins are quite full! I know I hold onto a lot of things and although I purged the bins a few months back, I need to take a deeper look through everything again. I want to be sure I'm only keeping and storing things with true meaning to me and things that make me happy to look back on. I look through my stuff quite often and I used to keep a lot of things that were hurtful to revisit; Not anymore though!
First, I took everything out of the bins and placed them in the following categories, letters, cards, photos, personal, high school and other. This helped me so that I could have both a visual and make it easier to go through each category.
LETTERS:
I already had them organized by giver. Letters are my favorite! However, I did stumble upon a few from 10 years ago that weren't all that meaningful so I let those go.
CARDS:
I had three organized bundles; birthday, wedding and graduation. Then I had a pile of everything else; holidays, mother's day, and just because cards to name a few. I went through everything and only got rid of a few things, mostly invitations. I had an invitation from 9 years ago to my friends 16th bithday party! I don't think I'll be keeping any invites of any sort anymore unless they are very special to me. I mean, you get invited, you attend or not attend and then it's over. The only invitations I'll be keeping from now on will have to be very special, such as my grandparents 50th Anniversary party. Now that's a keeper!
PHOTOS:
I had way more photos than I ever wanted. In fact, the majority were given to me. To downsize, I went through every photo and placed them in one of two piles, keep or purge. I mean, if you don't enjoy looking at a photo why keep it? Just saying!
PERSONAL:
LETTERS:
I already had them organized by giver. Letters are my favorite! However, I did stumble upon a few from 10 years ago that weren't all that meaningful so I let those go.
CARDS:
I had three organized bundles; birthday, wedding and graduation. Then I had a pile of everything else; holidays, mother's day, and just because cards to name a few. I went through everything and only got rid of a few things, mostly invitations. I had an invitation from 9 years ago to my friends 16th bithday party! I don't think I'll be keeping any invites of any sort anymore unless they are very special to me. I mean, you get invited, you attend or not attend and then it's over. The only invitations I'll be keeping from now on will have to be very special, such as my grandparents 50th Anniversary party. Now that's a keeper!
PHOTOS:
I had way more photos than I ever wanted. In fact, the majority were given to me. To downsize, I went through every photo and placed them in one of two piles, keep or purge. I mean, if you don't enjoy looking at a photo why keep it? Just saying!
PERSONAL:
This pile consisted of artwork (given to me and my own), stories I've written, and everything else I wanted to keep from kindergarten through 12th grade. I let go of a lot of my artwork. I only kept what I actually was proud of. As for the K-12 stuff, I kept my report cards, awards, cards from teachers, and a few pieces of work to reflect my growth in learning. I got rid of a ton of other stuff that I didn't care about revisiting. Oh, in this category I also have family recipes. Those are staying for sure!
HIGH SCHOOL:
I have this section separate from my K-12 because I actually did an additional two years at a different high school were I then graduated. I was a different person and in a very positive way. I accomplished many things and have so much that I'm proud of. I condensed this category into one binder to keep all of my stuff together and protected with page protecters. Behind this binder I did have my favorite first grade stuff. I didn't go through any of that. Those memories are precious!
OTHER:
This is the last category I had. It's basically my non paper memorabilia. I had quite a few books that I already read but they had special writing inside. I didn't want to keep the books anymore so, I just took out the special pages. I know, I know, I ripped out some pages, but honestly those first pages won't be meaningful to anyone else who reads the books and it didn't affect any part of the stories. I put the books in my donation pile afterwards. I also had cds. I took them out of their cases and put them into our cd lock box instead. There was a bunch of other stuff too. I got rid of anything that wasn't worth keeping but kept everything that was!
I think I did a great job of downsizing and condensing like items. It will be a lot easier now to find what I'm looking for and to put away any incoming things into their proper homes right away.
I'm done! It was a bigger task than I anticipated but now it's tidy and clutter free! I plan to do more organization and labeling at a later time.
I hope you enjoyed seeing my process. Thanks for reading!
- Danika
HIGH SCHOOL:
I have this section separate from my K-12 because I actually did an additional two years at a different high school were I then graduated. I was a different person and in a very positive way. I accomplished many things and have so much that I'm proud of. I condensed this category into one binder to keep all of my stuff together and protected with page protecters. Behind this binder I did have my favorite first grade stuff. I didn't go through any of that. Those memories are precious!
OTHER:
This is the last category I had. It's basically my non paper memorabilia. I had quite a few books that I already read but they had special writing inside. I didn't want to keep the books anymore so, I just took out the special pages. I know, I know, I ripped out some pages, but honestly those first pages won't be meaningful to anyone else who reads the books and it didn't affect any part of the stories. I put the books in my donation pile afterwards. I also had cds. I took them out of their cases and put them into our cd lock box instead. There was a bunch of other stuff too. I got rid of anything that wasn't worth keeping but kept everything that was!
I'm done! It was a bigger task than I anticipated but now it's tidy and clutter free! I plan to do more organization and labeling at a later time.
I hope you enjoyed seeing my process. Thanks for reading!
- Danika
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