Collections

I'm a sentimental guy.  I like to collect things that remind me of the good times in my life.  But, sometimes, I also collect "things" for no particular reason.

Our future lifestyle necessitates that I let go of some of those things.  Thanks to Ellen's parents allowing us some room for storage at their house, I don't need to purge all those "things" from my life, but I do need to get rid of most of them.  This has been a difficult task for a die-hard, sentimental pack rat.

For the sake of illustration, I give you a few examples.  First, a non-sentimental example.  I had several records that I recently gave to a friend.  This wasn't too difficult since I know that, with some combination of E-Bay and craigslist, I could probably find most of them again.

I present to you my tiny little record collection:





More difficult was the shedding of my T-Shirt Collection.  I capitalize the subject in that sentence because those of you who know me well are quite familiar with said T-Shirt Collection.  I haven't yet parted with all of them, but following are a few samples for your pleasure.






Finally, a jumbled combination of sentimental, useful and worthless.

Among other things, this 2' x 2' x 1.75' box contained:

• Every paystub I ever received since my first job as a waiter at Ponderosa Steakhouse
• Tax documents (older than seven years, of course)
• Bank account statements
• ATM receipts.  You Grand Rapids folks will appreciate these ones.
• Social Security statements
• Medical records
• Utility bills
• Insurance coverage information
• Credit card receipts

Rather than bringing all this to a shredder, we went camping this weekend and decided to add some fuel to the fire.

Part of my coping process is documentation.  I feel that if I have a photograph or some other record of a "thing" that was formerly in my life, it will trigger the same good memories as the thing itself.  And digital memories are so much lighter to carry around with me.