A Question

[melayneseahawk]

So, I'm trying to organize my room, which is unpleasant because I've got to unpack the stuff from the apartment, and I was in the process of packing my room at the parents', and I never finished. I'm running into stuff that I hung onto for no reason I can figure, and I'm trying to decide what to keep and what to throw out.

I've been told that things like old yearbooks and the handful of journals I started and then abandoned are things I should be keeping. What about old school papers? I've got what amounts to four milk crates of old school papers, mostly from high school. Should I be keeping any of it? I thought, at one point, that hanging onto the subjects I might use again (English, history, theatre, etc.) might be useful, but then I actually looked at the stuff and I'm not so sure. Even my (in)famous history notes based on Mr. Hines' lectures don't make much sense viewed four years later.

Really, I'm just procrastinating. But I'm curious what things people kept from their childhoods, and what they threw away.

Comments

[ibneko.livejournal.com]

Meh. I've kept all of my old school stuff. I'm not entirely sure why...

[muck-a-luck.livejournal.com]

I go back and look at photographs and yearbook type things from time to time and they interest the kids, too. I have one journal, from when I was a camp counselor, that means a lot to me.

I have kept course notes, course packs, research notes, and papers, but with a few exceptions, I have never really looked back at them.

[prionz-rok.livejournal.com]

Last winter, my mom made me go through all my high school work. I only wound up keeping:

-Two English journals
-The US history notebook where we had to decorate it according to a theme, do you remember? I think it was 10th grade, and the theme was "Welcome to the Jungle." I put so much damn effort into that thing (for such underwhelming results) that it felt criminal to throw it out.

I don't think I'll wind up keeping any of my college notes, and the only textbooks I plan on holding on to are my Molecular Bio and Genetics books. I'm just in such a mobile stage of my life that any excess baggage gets irritating fast.

[indywind]

Are you procrastinating about your SOS entry? ;-)

From my Misspent Youth (TM) I kept photographs, a handful of the niftier school assignments, a bunch of my early fanwriting and original art. A couple awards. An old jean jacket that I patched up and painted and wrote all over and got autographed by people when I was 15-17. A stuffed doggie. This all about fills one 10-ream paper box. Also, books I still love to re-read: this is the largest category of stuff I keep; there are dozens I've had for 20 years or more.

I discarded nearly all of my school materials--but I never have reviewed from notes much; having to re-synthesize improves my recall more, and other people (usually) write better references for the stuff I need to check.

Oh, but I have a set of western show chaps, black fringed suede with a silver concho, that I have been trying to find a new owner for ever since I stopped showing horses... know anybody who'd want 'em?

[melayneseahawk.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm procrastinating about everything.

Heh, the only person I know who does anything with horses is about 5-foot-nothing and built like a wall. :D Love the girl.

Re: my room, I'm running into two kinds of things I'm unsure about. The first is old school papers, and the second is books. My father's a librarian and I'm a writer, so part of me never wants to get rid of book ever, but the rest of me is looking at (for example) the collection of Holocaust and general Jewish Diaspora young adult fiction I accumulated over the years (for projects for middle school English class and Hebrew school, respectively, as I recall) and wondering a) when I'm every going to need them ever again, and b) whether it would be best to just donate them to the library. *shrugs*

I'm pretty sure I'm just going to sit down one day with something mindless on the tube and go through all the old school papers to see if there's anything worth keeping. I kind of want to see if I can find that old epistemology paper I pulled out of my ass and then got an A+ on, but I'm not sure I still have it...

[indywind]

Oooh, neat.

For the books... I dunno if you have the... issue is probably too strong a word... the thing like my SO; she doesn't like to just discard things that were ever meaningful to her, but she's pretty happy "placing them in a new loving home". So we get creative finding people or organizations who will promise to love and appreciate our used crap.
So, besides the library, I can offer a)bookmooch.com b)paperbackswap.com and c)local schools who might like a themed set (there was a fad amongst teachers a couple years ago for doing themed sets of supportive materials for alternative ways to approach important content). Or better yet, homeschool groups; all the ones I've known have been deeply enthusiastic about free learning materials.

::procrastinates with you::

[melayneseahawk.livejournal.com]

For me, it's more along the lines of a) it's something that would potentially still be useful to someone, and b) an offshoot of the Jewish idea of Tikkun Olam, something I picked up at my Jewish Zionist Socialist sleepaway camp. Basically, the concept compares the world to a jar that has a crack in it, and that the goodness in the world is slowly leaking out and being lost. To replace said goodness, people do things to help others. I guess it's the Jewish equivalent of karma, sort of? Anyway, the way I see it is: I have stuff I don't necessarily need anymore, it's still stuff with usefulness in it, I can give that stuff to people who need that stuff, and the world becomes a slightly brighter place.