unclutter | April Progress!

It has come in small bursts of activity here and there, but in April I did manage to find new homes for over 80 fanzines, took a couple boxes of linens, clothes and small decorative items to the charity donation place, used up some older foods in the pantry, and finally finished my family photo curation project! 10 smallish albums and a lot of boxes were condensed down to one large photo album and two smaller ones, encompassing 160 years of family history dating back to the US Civil War in the 1860s. I can't tell you how many photos I eliminated and tossed, but it was 2 large trash bags full. There are still a lot of photos and each and every one has been identified with names, approximate ages, dates and locations. It was such an emotional journey to winnow these down. I confess to having shed a lot of tears during the process and my goodness, it was HARD. But it is DONE!

Hoping to repeat the success in May, with another large collection of fanzines and clearing my desk and paper files to something more manageable. And possibly start packing up some moving boxes. I may get rid of some furniture pieces as well, since I am downsizing to a much smaller place.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

kalloway

Congrats! My parents have absolute piles of old family albums and the ones that aren't labeled are about 90% ??? who are these people but it's so hard to get rid of them... It's just such emotionally exhausting work... (We have been going through the labeled/known ones and sending pictures to relatives, especially ones who might not have anything of certain relatives. But then it all gets shoved back in the closets because yeah, it's a lot.)

Best of luck with May! Your posts have been inspiring.

vysila

Truer words were never written - curating family photos is very emotionally exhausting. I was at least spared the task of sharing with family - because they all dumped their own extras on me. LOL! I have the ones I feel are relevant to me and my son, and that's all I need or want. But still it was hard to decide which to keep and which to toss. So many memories!

Why thank you, fingers crossed that May is another productive month.