unclutter | Decluttering While Preparing to Move

I finally made the hard decision that it is time to sell my house and move closer to my son. Part of the prep is serious decluttering for a big downsize. Don’t know yet where I’ll be living after the move, but it will definitely be smaller.

Right now I am concentrating on two rather emotional tasks: curating thousands of family photos and also sorting through all my fanzines to see which are keepers and which can be released. Hope to scan a few of my favorite zines but doing it large scale won’t happen (I have maybe 150 zines).

Today I worked on the photo project and started a trash bag of discarded photos. It seems like taking photos goes in spurts and so many photos are of the same occasion and are nearly duplicates.

I also finagled my little old desktop scanner to work with Windows 11 and managed to scan one zine for posterity. At some point I’ll try to find the discards a new fannish home.

Oh, this is going to be such a long and tedious process. But at least it is very good motivation for clearing out a lot of stuff!

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Those do sound like daunting tasks but now that you've made the decision, you're motivated to get on with it (that's great!).

It seems like taking photos goes in spurts and so many photos are of the same occasion and are nearly duplicates.

I also found this to be true. I've got the family photos down to one medium size box. Good luck to you!

Motivation and energy, that's what it takes, all right! Fingers crossed I can keep up momentum.

Wow, that is spectacular that you got your family photos down to just one box. I need to emulate you! How long did it take you to go through that process?

Thank you. It was part of many-week Marie Kondo decluttering campaign I did a few years ago, but I think the photos took a long weekend (working on nothing else, mind you). I made some very hard rules, for example, no duplicates, no negatives, no photos without people, no photos where I don't anybody in the photo, no photos of people I don't like, etc.

Those are good rules. I must keep them in mind as I work on my own project.

If you don't know anyone personally to give your fanzines, you might consider one of the many library collections across the country.

This is one of the first to get started:

https://www.lib.uiowa.edu/sc/resources/zineresources/

Thank you for that suggestion. I was aware of Iowa's program but not so many of the others! Kinda afraid that by now they have all of the zines I'm looking to unload, but will certainly be checking around.

Many special collections libraries at universities are now actively collecting fanzines. It all has to do with the development of microhistory as an area of study and how libraries overlooked pop culture for so long.

Oh, that's good to know! I assumed that with the current state of politics and economy that universities would not be looking to expand their programs right now.

These fields have been operating for a decade now.

Well done for getting started early on tasks that are going to be emotional and exhausting.

Thanks, these two particular projects will undoubtedly be the hardest for me. I made good progress on the family photos but then completely stalled out for nearly a year. It's time to really focus now.

We’re also discussing moving. We don’t have any ’zines or much else to scan, but have also gone through quite a few photos.

Moving and preparing to move is a big job and I wish you the best on that journey.

Family photos are so so hard! I'm not as ruthless as I should be, but have made progress on the zine front!

Your icon is awesome - 'you are not alone'. So appropriate for many situations.

Decluttering While Preparing to Move

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Good luck.

Re: Good luck.