Last week, I decided to organize my stash of cards and stationary. Our basement held 2 (weirdly large) boxes labeled as such and decided to condense them down to 1 organized, user-friendly tub. I estimated that the whole process would take under half an hour. Which probably wouldn't have been true anyway, but my estimate was completely laughable once I decided that one of those boxes held a mixture of blank stationary and . . . sentimental things. Hand-written letters I've received from friends and family in the last 8 years. Every single RSVP card from our wedding. All the cards we received at our wedding. Leftover programs, invitations, and stamps (yay! useful!) from our wedding. Letters and cards I wrote to Ben from Iceland (I was desperately homesick on my study abroad program there), from our brief spell of long-distance dating when I first came to grad school, and throughout our marriage. Every single football, concert, play, airplane and movie ticket (yes: movies.) that Ben and I separately hoarded throughout college and early grad school. Pencil boxes I thought were pretty but never used, because who uses pencil boxes?
Getting through that box turned into a fairly harrowing hour. I am proud to say that I disposed of most things - perhaps my proudest moment was putting the stack of wedding rsvps in the recycling. Nearly all of the tickets are in the trash (the ink had mostly disappeared anyway). A box of scrapbook-ish supplies left over from our wedding guest book got organized and added to the tag sale pile. Blank cards, envelopes, and the like got sorted into the actual stationary bin, the office-supplies area, or the tag sale pile.
Things I couldn't bring myself to throw away:
- 3 wedding RSVP's with touching personal notes added.
- The plane ticket from when Ben flew to propose to me.
- A few tickets or mementos from early or extra-special dates.
- Letters between Ben and me.
On a separate night, I went through the stuffed gallon ziploc that held all of the cards we received for our wedding and showers. Any card that was just signed after the hallmark greeting got immediately tossed (a lesson I will remember when giving cards at future weddings!); those with personal notes that had meaning to them were mostly kept. I also made a compromise with myself and kept about 10 of our leftover wedding programs, throwing another 20 or so away. So, while I'll still be storing a "wedding mementos" bag, it's smaller than it used to be by a factor of three, which feels good.
On yet another separate night, I went through the actual stationary bin. This was somewhat less riddled with sentiment, although most of the items I went through came from a distinctly different time in my life (and one in which I wrote a LOT of hand-written letters). I kept the pretty envelopes I had made out of magazine pages (on the rare occasion that I send a hand-written letter, they're still fun to use), dumped a big pile of notecards emblazoned with my maiden name (but not before writing one to my parents just because), added a few full stationary sets to the goodwill pile, and sorted what was left into more user-friendly piles. I now have a large but shallow tub filled with labeled gallon ziplocs for thank you notes, birthday cards, blank cards, postcards, other occasion cards, and assorted envelopes. I'm not convinced that this is a perfect storage system, but in the absence of extensive desk-related cupboard space, and without buy expensive organizers, it was the best I could do.
Now all that remains is to decide what to do with the legitimately sentimental items - a scrapbook? A memento box? Shove them in a box and decide later? I need to make some kind of decision in the next 2 days, before leaving a pile of love letters and the like sitting around for my visiting in-laws to read!
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