Old notes

[cdave]

Bit late for a What I Did At The Weekend (Went to Caption (Oxford small press comics convention) on Saturday, and down south to visit parental units on the Sunday) post, but one of the things I did was clear some of my junk out of a parental loft.

[Poll #1446736]

I found that I had 3 cardboard boxes of "school stuff" and 2 plastic crates of "University stuff". I didn't have much time to go through it, but managed to sling a few bits (such as all my sixth form era invites to University open days). While I do like the odd doodle in the margin, and in joke scrawled on the cover of a notebook, I'm really not sure I need to keep quite this volume of stuff.

Given that I haven't looked at it in years, and am unlikely to do so in the near future, I probably should just sling most of it. But it's so final. This stuff, as useless as it is, is literally irreplaceable. I managed to avoid picking up a "bargin" in IKEA the other day on the basis that I'd rather pay full price when I need it, than hang onto something that just takes up space. But this stuff is my own hand.

Comments

[ang-grrr.livejournal.com]

The school stuff went out when I went to uni and the uni stuff went out when I moved in to this house. I just didn't have space to store it.

[owlfish]

Is the second question counting backwards or forwards? i.e. years ago, or how old I was?

[emmajking.livejournal.com]

I have all my physics/maths notes that could be in any way relevant, even though everything that's in them is also in the text books I have, in a more legible and coherent manner, basically because I don't like throwing stuff out and felt I had a half-way legitimate excuse for keeping those. I threw out all my Chemistry notes, though! ;) And I have a few bits and pieces of random stuff all the way back to primary school.

Never throw anything away, ever - you'll only regret it! That's my motto (and the reason I need a 4-bedroom house with double garage to fit all my junk in....)

If you really, really want to reclaim the space, you could start a mammoth scanning mission, and then keep it all electronically....?

[tregenza.livejournal.com]

Throw it all away.

Now.

Don't hesitate in anyway.

If you don't, you will be moving it around from house to house for the rest of your life.

You will not go back to read them, or even to sort them out. You have so many more interesting things to do and will continue to do so for the rest of your life.

Even if you went back to Uni to study exactly the same courses your old notes would be out-dated, useless and unread.

You will notice that none of the people advocating keeping the stuff say that they actually use their notes. They keep them because one day "they may be useful". That day never arrives.

Save space, money and time by just throwing them all away.

[feorag.livejournal.com]

I still have much of my University stuff, because it's useful. But I didn't go to university till I was 26, so the range of your second question is insufficient.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

I've kept all my notes and practicals from university (computer generated, but of interest because I wrote my own word processor to create them!), and add selection of school books, generally the pretty geography ones and the English composition. And some published yearbooks from my junior school, where I was unique in getting 2 poems in.

As all know I'm keen on chucking stuff out, but only if its generated by others. If I created it, its unique. I'd not use it to look up facts, but to remind me how clever I once was!

I could just keep a selection, but being typescript the volume isn't great enough for the effort to cull it, perhaps one crate's worth.

I enjoyed looking through my Dad's notebooks he'd kept from when he trained to be a radio repairman during WWII

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Most of my stuff like that had to be abandoned when I was moving between places because there wasn't space to bring it, rather than no space to store it. I do have other paperwork that goes back to when I was 15, and I've got a nearly full set of school reports back to primary school. Things I do regret losing are letters from penfriends and some of the more creative school work - a few bits of art stuff, creative writing and so on.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I have a very few representative samples; not of notes, but a couple of childhood essays. The rest has all long since been ditched, along with textbooks (other than a couple of lasting interest).

I have a Really Useful Box full of sentimental claptrap of absolutely no utility or beauty; my rule is that I won't to keep more than will fit in that box. Though much of what is in that box can be scanned and discarded and I do have that as a future plan. I also have a couple of special objects that are not in that box either because they're too precious and live with my jewellery, or because I'm so proud of them they are actually on display.

My equivalent of the school notebooks was a selection of trophies that I won as a child in maths contests. My mum cleared them out, and some years later I gave them to The Year of the Teledu to use as prizes.

Flylady has loads of posts on the stuff people keep. Amazing numbers of human teeth, for one thing.

But my serious clutter problem isn't the utterly useless and ugly, it's the stuff that's marginally useful, or that is decorative but that I don't have space to display it.