Decluttering Sentimental Stuff

[ChippyTea16]

Hi, I know there’s hundreds of decluttering threads around but I wanted to ask what people do to specifically declutter the following. I’m not too bad with being ruthless and chucking stuff I don’t need but even though most things have a place, I seem to have a lot of ‘stuff’ I would like to not have to think about! Please can anyone help with the following?

-old photos. I have photos displayed in frames but I have loads of old photo albums from uni days as well as boxes of photos of random stuff. After reading about decluttering generally and displaying items you love I’m not Against keeping (some) photo albums but some are photos I’m not too bothered about looking at! But what are the best ways to physically get rid of photos? I don’t want random pics of me in the bin!

-old uni work. I’m likely to never read through all this again but I feel really funny about throwing it all away! Has anyone done this?? I did a languages degree so in the unlikely event I want to study again id probably just use online tools that weren’t available in my day but all that work 😭

-old video cameras - I’m pretty sure I have the videos in a hard drive on my laptop so there’s no reason to keep these that I don’t use is there??

I feel like I’ve been quite good with getting rid of things like cards as I read they were designed to provide an instant reaction so once you’ve read them and had that reaction there’s no need to keep them (and it’s very true I rarely read them or look at them again)… but I just find it hard to get rid of some things even though I’m not a hoarder and prefer clean, clear spaces!

anyone have any tips for the sentimental stuff?

I struggle with this too, but find it’s the actual moment of chucking it which gives me the lump in the throat moment, but when it’s gone I feel better.

I would put the photos in the bin (I guess you could shred them if you don’t want them in the bin, but think that would feel worse seeing your face get repeatedly chopped up!!) or can they go in paper recycling? Not sure if photo paper is recyclable. Uni notes definitely in recycling, and I wonder if you could get any money for the cameras on eBay?

Good luck, and focus on that lovely clear space you’ll have afterwards!

Check you do have the film saved on your hard drive look up your camera on ebay to see if it has value

The photos you can scan into your computer and store on a hard drive your kids might luke looking through them one day and seeing how young you were

We got rid of hundreds, if not thousands of photos

We picked a couple of rainy days . We went through them and even though there were quite a few that brought back memories, the vast majority were of places we couldn't remember, people and children we couldn't remember so we just binned them.

I felt a bit glum doing it but also relief at letting go.
The more important photos were scanned and kept in folders on the pc.

We're slowly working our way through them and turning them into photo books.

Thank you all, totally agree I need to just start and have decided to consolidate everything into one album per ‘theme’ so my 5 albums of uni photos will become one. If I can see everything in one place and know I don’t have random boxes of pics everywhere I think I won’t miss what I throw out. I also keep reading photos are not recyclable so have to go in the normal bin.

I have made a good start on some other stuff though and I do feel good for chucking it out and donating whatever is in good condition so I’m hoping to stay motivated and tackle these photos!

I went through lots of family photos with my DF. He told me who the people in the photo were, the approximate date of the photo and where it was taken. I wrote this info on the back on the photo in pencil. I'm so pleased we did this together. Any out of focus photos I binned, duplicates of family photos I passed on to other family members.

More recent photos, I sorted into themes (DCs school days, holidays, etc) and gave albums to the DC. I have kept other albums and I love looking through them with my DGC.

Old Christmas and birthday cards, I sorted through again and kept a few special ones. Other cards I cut up to use as shopping lists. Or else nurseries, playgroups, schools might use them....

For school, college, uni “learning” things I went to the library and scanned them all to digital format – it’s all on about 5 memory sticks and the folders and paperwork got shredded and recycled.

I’ll be doing the same with photos/albums this winter and putting the shredding in paper bags to donate to our local pub’s bonfire night bonfire when the time comes.

Any items of sentimental value got cleaned, boxed, labelled and dated. They’re stacked neatly in the loft now. (This was a Lockdown Project).

With the old video cameras, check the films on them and get them digitised, then get rid of the electrical items.

Yes, the history of My Life has been reduced to “Memory” sticks

Oh Xmas and Birthday cards – I used small children and pinking shears to cut the pictures up, punch a hole in one corner and repurpose them into gift tags. A great crafty project to do with kids on a rainy day.

Thank you all for your tips! @DatingDinosaur that is an amazing idea to digitise your uni stuff! I'm going to look into that for sure. I definitely think I could do that without feeling like I'm losing it all. And @MissMarplesGoddaughter that sounds lovely going through all the photos together and sorting into themes.

I seemed to have stayed in the mood for a couple of weeks now and I think I'm almost done. I've managed to:
-go through every 'loose' photo that wasn't in an album and select only the ones I wanted to keep. I didn't count but must have been almost 400 and reduced to less than 100 across 3 themes of 'Uni', 'Travel' and 'Family'
-I then started on my actual albums, taking out any I didn't like/were blurry/were of places or people I didn't know who/where they were/duplicates etc. and managed to throw out 10 physical albums (that were old/scruffy/half full etc)
-I then re-did all my photos into the nice (matching) albums so now I just have 1 full album of Uni memories, my travel/gap year ones in nice matching albums, 1 full one of friends/nights out over the years and 1 full one of family/home and childhood pics I wanted to keep

I also managed to reduce my 'sentimental' stuff into 2 boxes, one from my travels and one from my childhood of stuff I don't want to throw out. These both fit neatly on a shelf with my photo albums and I feel a lot better knowing they are 'there' now for when I want to look at them instead of buried under boxes of rubbish.

I also donated the digital camera and a load of other nice unused bits to the charity shop so hopefully they'll find a new home soon.

The last thing I have to do now is put any sentimental cards/letters into a scrapbook which I'm not in a rush to do. I already have the scrapbook and have been through the cards and letters I want to keep (from grandparents and stuff) so once that is done I'll put it with my small box of childhood things. Then in 10 years time if I haven't looked at any of it I'll start again 😂

Photo paper is not recyclable. I checked. We are having to go through a huge number of a late relative's photo albums and thin them out to something manageable.

Yeah @Katmai its frustrating it’s not recyclable, I’ve literally been cutting up my photos as I don’t have a shredder!