Help me big a brave grown-up and tell me to chuck out all this old stuff!

[BlueBrush]

Having an essential pre-Christmas declutter and am tackling some boxes of my stuff that have been sat in my parents' house for years. Some of it I will definitely keep but most of it just needs to go. I'm having a massive attack of nostalgia, so I need some straight talking!

Coursework from a school I hated, photos of people who made me unhappy, nondescript pictures I drew when I was 9, certificates for a tap exam I did when I was 5, cycling proficiency scores...these things can all go, yes? These are not interesting artefacts my children will one day enjoy looking at. My children will be too busy getting on with the business of accumulating their own crap making their own memories. This stuff has nothing to say about the person I am now. Its just stuff. Am I right?

If you haven't looked at it in years then it can go. Maybe keep one example of your childhood art work but coursework can definitely be chucked. You won't miss it.

Default to toss. Pull out only things you actively want to keep.

I like looking at this stuff - so I have kept all mine! It is only 2 small boxes though and we have plenty of loft space.
I am the opposite of a hoarder - I keep very little as a rule, but random stuff from my childhood makes me smile. I found a letter from an old pen pal when we moved recently - loved reading it.

Yes that's exactly what I'm aiming for Megan. Just a few bits, even if it's a random selection.

...Oh it just keeps going. Recipes from Womans Weekly I must have had since I was about 14 (and never made), something I drew on Microsoft Paint when that was new and exciting...

...all my French excercise books. Bloody hell.

I suppose I thought I should keep them just in case I needed to learn again. If only I'd known the internet was going to come along...

Take photographs for posterity and then get rid.

My DC loved looking at my old school efforts. Keeping them for some other reason now -that I will come up with soon-

Take a box and fill it - that's all you're allowed. Or one piece from each year of your life. Good luck!

I'd keep the certificates and bin everything else. I've cleared out almost everything from my childhood and found it very freeing.

Take photographs for posterity and then get rid.

This^^

And maybe keep a few key pieces - your best certificates? Plus the things that made you smile. If it looks like a random letter, pop it in a poly pocket with a sheet on which you've written an explanation. ("Jane was my penfriend in Australia from 19XX to 19XX ...")

Photos then get shot of it all.

You really don't need it. The Mumsnet Vipers hereby give you permission!

Thanks everyone! Two hours of wrangling the DCs into bed has dragged me back into 2018 and the here and now. I shall enjoy looking at the things, and then cheerfully bin them. (By which I mean carefully recycle them, but you know what I mean!)

I'm currently using a lot of my old stuff as firelighters. 30 year old bank statements, DD's primary school reports, the deeds* to our old house etc.

*Two pages and a ground plan. The DPs' deeds could have covered a tennis court, all properly scrivened.

Well done OP

I kept my final art coursework and a few essays from college/uni in a file plus some certificates. Binned all exercise books.

Put the good stuff in a ring binder. Binned the rest.

My mother ripped all the pages out of my school work books, leaving only the blank ones, then stored them away. When I found them and was looking forward to looking through them I discovered what she had done.

She also destroyed all my father's papers when he died, I had put them aside to look at as I found them interesting, went in to find her tearing them into bits.

Because of her deciding what I was permitted to own I have been reluctant to let things go ever since, especially when I discovered she had sold my good toys, leaving the ratty ones packed in the loft.