Saturday, June 26, 2010

Should I keep my dictionaries?

As we're starting to move, I'm thinning down our stuff.

We have at least 20 dictionaries. Chinese to English, French, Italian, German, various English tomes, crossword puzzle dictionaries. They are never used since the internet is so much more convenient. I keep trying to box some of them up for the thrift shop but never quite make it. Too sentimental - full of memories of graduate school (Richard), article writing deadline angst (me); some are gifts, some are actually tear stained. And so I'll drag them along with us, dust them weekly (ha) and consider them memory books rather than actually useful.

I've figured out why clothes are so hard to throw out. My closet is a kind of social scrapbook. Looking at a dress and remembering where I wore it brings back a flood of memories. Some things, even if they're never worn again are worth keeping just for this memory trigger. I'm toying with the idea of photographing them before throwing them out. Browsing the pictures might be like browsing the closet?

Culling the kitchen stuff is fairly easy. Nobody needs 20 small stainless steel bowls and they don't trigger memories. Thank God for the thrift store. 

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:48 AM

    Hi Helen,
    Don't forget the bottom shelf for your cast off books. that is if you have some that don't have memories. I'm getting pretty good at donating my old books. Clothes are much easier. I'm not attached to them at all. Wouldn't even want to take pictures.ugh. Hate them all.

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  2. Yes, I've made many trip to the bottom shelf....it makes the pain of separating from the books a lot easier. Funny how we all attach or don't attach in different ways to things!

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