Sick of cards! What do you do with them?

[Hiccupiscal]

My natural state is to hoard.
Ive been battling against this for years.
I'm on yet another round of decluttering, the one thing I always come across is cards..
Birthday cards. Christmas cards. Cards my partner has wrote for me, card ive written to my DC, cards other have given me.

I almost always end up in tears reading them. Not tears of happiness, but of empty sadness. Now im sat with a pile of them and i never know what to do with them.

I could obviously chuck them all away, but it feels so heartless and wrong.
I'm no good with technology so the whole take a picture thing would be misreable, plus I find with phone galleries they tend to flounce photos in your face with "this time 1 year ago" albums (which I hate)

What do you do with sentimental cards? Im sick of throwing them in a box to come across next decluttering purge, to come across them, cry - and repeat!

I honestly need it to be acceptable to stop/receiving sending the damn things!!

Its a really overwhelming process tbh, i have cards that were written in by my exH from DC before everything went shit. I keep going back and forth between keeping them and getting shot.

You'll be happy to know I've taken a box and shoved it in the recycling so far. Its not huge but its a start. I'm still sat amongst a whole load of boxes of memories and struggling.

Thank you for book recommendation, anything that is not the woman who tells you to "hold the item and see if it gives you joy" is worth giving a go, imo.

ive also just had a break and ate half a bag of sharers maltesers & Christmas chocs that are probably out of date, to make me feel better

Thank you for book recommendation, anything that is not the woman who tells you to "hold the item and see if it gives you joy" is worth giving a go, imo.

Haha, I was about to recommend Marie Kondo! But only because what she says about sentimentality is similar to what people have said here. It helped me stop hanging on to things - letters from teenage boyfriends, years of birthday and Christmas cards, old diaries! Stuff I don’t need and nobody else would need or want to see when I’m gone.

@GingerAndTheBiscuits

Thank you for book recommendation, anything that is not the woman who tells you to "hold the item and see if it gives you joy" is worth giving a go, imo.

Haha, I was about to recommend Marie Kondo! But only because what she says about sentimentality is similar to what people have said here. It helped me stop hanging on to things - letters from teenage boyfriends, years of birthday and Christmas cards, old diaries! Stuff I don’t need and nobody else would need or want to see when I’m gone.

Thats the one, Marie kondo, I have read some of her book, and liked some if it, but had to draw some lines at thanking my jumper for its service

Also wasnt taken with her Tv series.

....my old diaries are another thing to get rid of, I dont think I'm going to be Anne Frank in the future, with my 14 year old obsession with certain boys I knew luckily they're at my mothers house for getting rid of at another time in the future!

I enjoy my cards for about a week on the mantlepiece and then recycle them as they have done the job they were meant for, to enjoy for the occasion

DH sometimes keeps a favourite one for a bookmark

A while back my mum gave me all the cards she had kept from my birth onwards, I didnt know half the people and most were dead. I kept the one my dad gave her and chucked the rest. I've recently gone through what I had kept throughout my adult hood. Most went in recycling because like you op they made me cry, lots.of the people.are.dead including my lovely dad. From the kids birth cards I couldn't remember lots of the people ie colleagues of mine and dh who have moved on now so chucked them too apart from few special ones. I felt bad bad at first but havent thought of them at all until reading your post.

Let them go, you won't remember them in future and as pp said the sender wouldn't want you upset by a.minor gesture such as giving a card.

I keep any cards that have long messages in, like from exes or friends. Throw away anything else.

Throw them all away.
Your children will never want their old cards, in fact when DC grow up they tend to want to take very little of their childhood stuff with them.
My mother died in February and had a lot of stuff. My sister and I really didn't want things that had sentimental value to HER but not to us.
Out of her whole house we have kept 2 boxes of photographs.

I recycle most of mine. It's good to receive at the time. But when I take it down off the side, I chuck it.