I’ve been doing a lot of cleaning, a lot of throwing things away and I’m once again amazed at how much shit I’ve managed to accumulate over the years.
Just going through my desk alone, I’ve found papers that I’ve been holding onto since elementary school: recipes for fake glass, notes to chemistry class, English assignments, comics I drew. There are toys and knick-knacks, bits of metal, broken locks, magnets, dead pens, old Far Side cartoons and a whole host of other things. Or, there were. Now it’s all either in the trash, in the recycling, or in a give-away box.
It’s extremely cathartic to just…let all of these things GO. There’s no reason to keep 90% of these things. I don’t look at them. I don’t treasure them. They’re just taking up wasted space that I could be using to store newer pieces of junk.
I want to get rid of it all. Just get a giant trash bag and throw everything away and start from scratch. Except I don’t want to accumulate this much stuff again. I want to always be this free of tie-downs, of nostalgic reminiscences.
I’ve always been a weird mix of sentimental and anti-sentimental. I have no interest in photographs, because I assume if I don’t remember something, it wasn’t worth remembering. And photographs, or more accurately snapshots, don’t contain enough of the experience to be worth having.
On the flipside, I’ll hold onto some weird doodle I made in 7th grade math class because it’s something I made. Never mind that it’s something so crappy looking that I’d be ashamed to show it to anyone. I made it, so it must stay.
But my old stance on that kind of thing is quickly being reversed by the idea that I can’t take it with me, so why bother keeping it at all? I don’t WANT this much stuff. I don’t want to have to cart it around. I don’t want to worry about it. I just want it gone.
This is an extension of my old blog and my need to delete it. It’s time to move on from things. It’s time to stop dwelling and focusing on the things that were and move on to things that are actually important. Namely, what’s to come and what’s going on right now.
Dylan Charles
dylancharles.net 
For me, it’s a mix of being sentimental and being afraid of forgetting. I don’t trust my memory enough to let things go. I have a few shoeboxes of random things (even boarding passes for flights) that I take with me whenever I move. I seldom ever look at the boxes, but when I do, it makes me really happy/sappy.
But yes, definitely get rid of whatever doesn’t produce any kind of emotion worth having. That’s my policy anyway 🙂