First rule of decluttering
Never do your own.
Yes, I’m packing to move this weekend. But before I can pack, I need to declutter.
It’s not easy, I tell you. Especially when the stuff goes back more than 20 years and some of them just cannot be thrown away. Stuff like…
… a couple of pop annuals from 1970 …
… certain issues of Life magazine, one with the Kennedy children on the cover, another with Meryl Streep on the cover …
… special issues of Rolling Stone magazine, one about women in rock and another with a “where are they now?” feature (featuring Mary Hopkin, Paul Revere, Mark Lindsay, etc.) …
… a copy of Visual Aid, the visual version of Live Aid, featuring the works of celebrity photographers like Annie Leibowitz and celebrity subjects such as Bob Geldof, a very young Richard Gere …
… the two issues of Newsweek and Time with their cover stories of John Lennon’s murder …
How can one throw away such keepsakes?
I was going to suggest asking a friend to declutter for you. Or to exchange decluttering tasks. But what if the friend throws away something precious?
Hey, half the stuff I’ve not opened to look at for the past decade or so. Some, like the Visual Aid book, I don’t even remember buying!
It has been said if you pack a boxful of stuff, label it with the date of the packing, seal it, put it away, and after six months, the box is not opened, you can throw (or give away) that box of stuff.
But … what if in the midst of decluttering, you stop and glance at the stuff, which is my current predicament?
The answer?
Keep. Don’t throw. Bring them to the new place.
Fortunately, amidst all that stuff are things that can be safely given or thrown away. About 50%, I think.
