I’m doing a big spring cleaning. I especially want to clear some room in my file cabinets.
I’ve kept most personal correspondence from my friends and close relations since high school (I’m in my mid-40s now). I’m tempted to toss a lot of the old papers, especially ones from people that I’m no longer in touch with. Truth be told, it’s not like I ever go into the files and wistfully reread valentines from college girlfriends. Even the notes I’ve browsed through tonight while wrestling with this issue are pretty damn dull, juvenile and often meaningless.
Then again, I don’t want to do something I will later regret. Maybe a card that is meaningless to me now will matter to me in my golden years.
I’m curious to know how other Dopers have dealt with this dilemma in their lives.
PS – To add some perspective, I should mention that I live in a tiny NYC apartment. I can’t just pack up all the letters in a box, put the box in the attic and forget it. Keeping the papers will mean they will continue to take up my very precious living space.
Toss it all. If you rarely go back and look at things, you won’t remember what you have in there, so are unlikely ever to go back and find a card that suddenly becomes meaningful.
I’d never toss a letter from someone. If someone takes the time to write a letter to me, I’ll cherish it forever. Especially if it’s from someone who was romantically involved with me at the itme.
I’d toss 'em - then again, I toss most stuff that hasn’t been used, read, listened to or worn in over a year: my past is in a state of constant revision.
I used to have a whole box of letters from my ex-partner - this is a woman I was desperately in love with over two tumultuous years - and after I got together with the current Missus, I figured it might be a little disloyal keeping them in my box - not at her behest, I might add. I re-read them all, and was surprised to find that there was barely a flicker of interest.
It’s as if all these passionate, steamy, tempestuous, raging, loving, accusatory letters that I’d waited for so desperately and then pored over to decipher the slightest scraps of meaning had been written to someone slightly embarrassing I’d known ten years ago and then lost touch with: they didn’t seem like my letters any more, and out they went. Not even a ceremonial immolation, just into the rubbish, and another piece of my past erased.
Maximum deniability, that’s the ticket. I have always been at war with Eastasia.
My rule is to keep the memorablilia that make you feel good about yourself and your life if you’d ever reread them, and toss out all the rest. So, keep love letters and throw out angry accusatory letters. If you are like me, you’d avoid reading the latter anyway.
When my parents sold their house shortly after I moved into my studio apartment, I lost my “free” storage space and was faced with a similar dilemma. I had old letters, birthday cards, school newspapers, my collection of NHL team yearbooks I’d gotten when I was Maloney-Bros.-n-hockey fanatic stage, music memorabilia… You name it, I had it, but no room to store most of it.
I read them all again, re-lived some good times, and smiled an awful lot. In the end, I kept only a very small box of things as memories, which are now on a shelf in my smallest closet. The rest I tossed, being sure to shred some of the more personal items that had addresses etc. on them.
Sure, I hesistated before tossing some things, but the truth was, I hadn’t even seen some of the stuff I’d saved in almost twenty years. Even forgot some of those things ever existed. I don’t think that 20 years further down the road I’ll be sorry I didn’t keep them. If I remember them at all, it will be with the same fondness as some event for which I have no pictures, only memories.
Seriously, I’ve moved around a lot and tend not to keep stuff. There are two people whose letters I want always, whether I reread them yearly or not. All else gets set free, sometimes right away, sometimes weeks or months later.
Of course, I’m running a certain risk: if anyone from my past wins a Nobel Prize, it will be somebody whose letters were full of discussion covering the origins of their discovery, and I will not have them.
Keep it. Put it in storage, or someplace where it won’t take up space that you need right now. But years from now, you’ll be able to look it over and reminisce.
If you’ve got a scanner, scan them, burn the files on a CD, and throw the originals away. The CD will take up a lot less space than a letter. It’s what I did with my old love letters. And (grin) the files are password protected so nobody else will find out how weird I really am.
stuyguy - Let me assign a different perspective on this.
Those letters…all letters…are invaluable insights for the future into the way we live today. You may think they’re trivial to others or meaningless or whatever but I’m right in saying that they’re the single best way for a 23rd (or further!) century historian to get his/her head around day to day life in our time.
I have, for many years, collected old journals, diaries, letters and other paper items (contracts, indentures, whatever) out of both personal and historical interest. I have a non-formal agreement with one of my college professors to donate them at some point to the library there. And I’ll do that. Those people will live on and contribute to further understanding the distance between ages.
So, if you are absolutely determined to get rid of them I hereby offer to have them shipped here to me for eventual archiving in my old college library. If you’re shy I promise not to read them. I’ll get the package and tuck it away with the others (some of which I’ve read and some I haven’t depending on my interest).
Please…don’t destroy them. They’re more valuable than you know.
:dubious: I don’t think the OP was implying he was wallowing. It’s not a good idea to completely forget the past, either, as that way you never learn from your mistakes.
I kept a particularly juicy letter from a semi-stalkier wannabe girlfriend, and then forgot about it - It was an imaginitive and reasonably well-written piece of erotica, but the girl herself was mentally less-than-attractive. Years later, my wife of 12 years stumbled upon it, and gave me an evening’s ration of crap about it. Other than that once, though, I’ve never retained such things, and have never felt for the lack. OTOH, having had the letter found, the consequences were modest, and easy enough to bear.
I think LonesomePolecat has the best idea; scan them if you have the means. If not, I strongly recommend finding a way to save them. Pieces of history, even if it’s not particularly significant history, are by their definition irreplaceable. I wish I had all my love letters, notes, etc. from my past.
My personal tendency, when I go through my periods of trying to not be a packrat, is to keep the letters from the most meaningful people in your life, or the people who used to be very meaningful. Then, keep the letters that have the most valuable emotional content. I held onto notes from junior high for years, that I would go back to, and get nothing out of at all. The notes would be long rambling missives about boredom during a class, and so on. Something like that, when there’s not much content to it, if it hasn’t added to your life in any way, it’s not adding to it now.
However I also keep letters for the same reason I keep books, magazines, clippings and whatever else, because my memory is not the best. And maybe one days yours won’t be that great, and it will be nice to reminisce.