Category: Possession

How Do You Preserve Your Past?

As we age, we collect more and more memories and experiences. How do you preserve the past for the future?

In theory, if you kept the proper documentation you would be able to recreate your life. Ticket stubs from concerts you attended, holiday and birthday cards from friends and family, credit card bills would show what you bought and when, and of course pictures of all the highlights.

Naturally, you probably don’t keep all that stuff. If you preserved everything, you’d pretty soon drown in it all. So probably bills get thrown out after keeping for a predetermined length of time. Cards are displayed for a short while and then recycled. And so on.

But how do you determine what to keep? What makes the cut, and what gets tossed like so much junk?

There is an additional issue to consider for those things you decide to retain. How do you store them, preserve them, organize them, and display them? If you keep, for example, pictures of vacations, do you have albums for each one? Do you keep digital copies only, or do you have physical prints made? How often do you look at them yourself, or show them to other people?

A neat keepsake would be a collage of a hobby you have, like playbills from all the theater productions attended, or bibs from races you’ve run. That could be a way to display them, but to do so requires that you save them until you have enough to gather together.

And what about less fun stuff, like tax returns or bills or receipts. How to you store them until it is safe to dispose of them? What about important documents like a passport, a marriage license, or birth certificate?

Deciding what to keep and how to keep it takes time, organization, and money. How do you manage it?

Related questions: Keep or toss? What material possession means the most to you? How much does your past determine your future? Do you keep a journal?

Keep Or Toss?

Do you like to keep all the books you read, the music you hear, and so on? Or are you a minimalist who prefers every surface bare? Do you keep things or toss them?

Share why if you wish.

Keep Or Toss?
Results

How Important Is Preservation?

To be able to learn from the past, we need to preserve it. But what happens when preservation keeps us from improving?

Most people are familiar with preservation, at least in basic form. If you live in a historic city or area, you are likely familiar with one or more buildings that have been designated a historical landmark.

Similarly, important historical figures often donate their papers and effects to a library. For instance, the Boston University’s Mugar Library has the papers, correspondence, and effects that belonged to noted author Isaac Asimov. They are preserved for historians to study.

Of course, preservation doesn’t have to be limited to famous people. You’ve probably thought about how you might preserve your own belongings. Perhaps you have a photo album, or keep postcards or letters you have received. Maybe you have a home safe or special location to store important documents. These might include the deed to a home, a wedding certificate, high school and/or college diploma, social security card, passport, and so on.

And yet, knowing what to keep and what to get rid of can be very difficult. Your email inbox, for instance, likely gets some important documents that you’d like to keep. Probably, it also gets flooded with unimportant messages of all kinds. Do you bother to sift through the contents to keep the wheat and eliminate the chaff? If not, is it because you don’t think it is worth your time?

Also, sometimes you have to tear down the old in order to build the new. Can we reconcile the need to save the past as well as make a better future?

Related questions: What possessions of yours will someone want when you die? What advice would you give your past self? Is life today better than in the past?

 

 

Do We Have Too Much Stuff?

In many ways, our society is based on the idea of buying things. It helps keep our economy active, but does it lead to us having too much stuff?

Having a healthy economy seems to be good for everyone. Companies have the resources to produce goods, workers have money to buy those goods, and owners can turn a profit. Everyone wins, right?

Of course, it is not that simple. One problem we are seeing is that people buy things without necessarily having the money to be able to afford them. Credit, in the form of loans or credit cards, make it all too easy to buy things without necessarily having the money for them.

Another issue is with the environment. Making goods takes resources and energy, and those are available in finite quantities. Our consumer culture is leading to the depletion of natural resources, or environmental devastation in the effort to get more.

The primary problem we are talking about today regards the accumulation of stuff. In a consumer culture, an entire industry has been created around convincing you that you need to buy the latest tech, another car, tchotchkes and doodads of all sorts.

Some people have a problem with hoarding, bringing item after item into their home and never throwing anything out. Others move their excess stuff to a storage locker, if they have too much to fit in the home where they live. Or perhaps things just get dumped in a landfill if we no longer have space.

Is this a real problem in our society? Are we living in an unsustainable way when it comes to our belongings? Or is it just a case of some people having too much disposable income and too little self control?

Related questions: How much is enough? What material possession means the most to you? What possessions of yours will someone want when you die? How many pairs of shoes do you own?

Declutter Or Accumulate?

Which are you more likely to do, declutter or accumulate? Which feels more natural for you? Has it changed over time?

Share why if you wish.

Declutter Or Accumulate?
Results