The Purge: Paper Edition

A couple of weeks ago, when I started, what I like to call, “The Great Purge: My Foray into Minimalism”, I began with what I thought would be a pretty tough challenge, even though it was a small space: my closet. You can see the 35 hanger closet in the first post, “the wardrobe purge“. Going through the clothes and accessories was a fairly easy thing for me to do (except the earrings… those were hard). Going through the rest of this crap? Yeah… NOT so easy.
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I don’t know about you guys, but I keep all of my most personal possessions in my closet. My wedding dress, mementos from my past, kid’s artwork and schoolwork, things I want to some day do, things that I basically don’t need on a daily basis. Now while die-hard minimalists would just say get rid of it all, I can’t do that. Will I someday? Who knows.
Do I need any of it?
NO
Do I want to keep some of it?
YES
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The process that this post goes into took about 5 or 6 days, going through everything over and over again in order to keep whittling it down. Plus, I had gotten rid of quite a lot over the past couple of years anyway. My high school pins, awards, etc., my teenage journals, the shot glass candle from my prom, the guest book from our wedding, and stuff like that never made the trip to Colorado from Hawaii. I mean, come on. Do you ever use that shot glass candle? Or your high school “letter”? Does it enrich your life or would a picture of it be just as good for bringing back the memories associated with that item?
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The hardest part for me was throwing something away that one of my children made. At one point in time during this process, I had to stop and just go be with my kids, to prove to myself that I was not a horrible mother or something. But, I can honestly tell you that a couple of weeks later, I haven’t missed, or regretted getting rid of, one single item. I feel happier when I go into my closet, not saddened. I feel free!
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STEP 1: Kid’s Papers and Photos
OK, so this is what I started with:

Yeah… it was pretty bad.
I started out by trimming all of the kid’s large (11×14) photographs that I used to have hanging on the wall throughout the years down to 8×10’s so that they could all fit in the accordion file I was planning on putting them in. I also decided that their baby books were wasting space. Now, before you freak out on me, hear me out. NONE of their baby books were ever completely filled/finished anyway and I had made each of them a scrapbook of their first year which I did keep. I tore the pages that I wanted to keep out of the baby books and put them into their scrapbooks.
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And here is the huge pile on my bedroom floor of garbage. it was 2 inches thick in the center!

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Fast forward a couple of days, I still thought I could get rid of more… get rid of the entire accordion file!
I went through everything again and decided a couple of things.
1.) I don’t need to keep 8×10’s. I am never going to hang them up on the wall again, and if the kids want pictures of themselves as kids, they won’t want a huge one.
2.) Unless it has a hand print on it (to show their size) they don’t need the actual pieces of artwork or schoolwork that they made. They will just want to see it.
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The logical conclusion (give me a Spock moment here) was to scan everything into the computer and only keep the hand print artwork, which I put into their baby books. The biggest saving grace was to keep only 2 or 3 pieces of artwork and 2 or 3 pieces of schoolwork, per child, per year.
So after the second go around, the accordion file went to the yard sale pile, the hand-print artwork went into the baby books, a bunch more got thrown away, and I am still in the process of scanning the rest into the computer (which I will back up on an external hard drive). And, as you can see in the first picture below, I kept my 3 baby toys. Each of my kids used them when they were babies, and as you can see, 3 toys, 3 kids, it all works out! Each of my children will get 1 toy when they have a child.

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STEP 2: Personal Mementos
As I stated earlier, I had already gotten rid of most of my personal mementos when we moved to Colorado. All I had left was everything my kids had ever made specifically for me, cards form our wedding and certain holidays that people had given to me, the letters from my husband from each time he was away at war, and a few other things. I went through everything anyway, it was time to minimalize, baby!
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I kept some of the things my kids had made for me, but not all. I can’t really describe how I decided what went and what stayed, it’s very personal… I just did it. As for my husband’s letters, I kept all of the handwritten ones from his first couple times over there, before they had computers, and decided to scan the printed out emails that I had. After all, they were only print outs, I was just turning them back into their electronic form.

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STEP 3: Paperwork
I used to have an actual file cabinet full of paperwork. Pad bills, old taxes, and tons of other stuff that I can’t even remember. I had gotten rd of most of it before we moved from Hawaii, but I still had a small file box full of crap. Yes crap!
This step was waaaaay easier than the previous 2 since I wasn’t emotionally connected to old bills and papers. By the way, just for your own reference: taxes are to be kept for 3 years (in the U.S.), you do not need your receipt for your paid electric bill from 1999 or from last month (if you paid with a check or online with your bank account, you can easily prove that), all of the paperwork from when you bought your house is public record, you do not need a copy (except the actual title, don’t get rid of that!). Most of the things you want to keep can also be scanned and kept electronically. Most companies/agencies will accept those just as well as the originals, as long as it’s not a signed, notarized document. Most of the time we email people the documents anyway, or send them a copy. They never even see the originals! These are just my personal opinions and are in no way professional legal council. Do your own research, if you are unsure about something. (sorry, but I’ve got to cover my but, there are some mean, crazy people out there!)

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STEP 4: Misc.
This step is for all of the other stuff that just kind of hangs out in the deep void that is was my closet. For instance, I still had about 25 8mm video cassette tapes from our first and second camcorders. While there are some things on those tapes that I would like to digitalize, it costs $30-$50 per tape to have the video retrieved and digitaized. I had kept these tapes thinking that would eventually do just that, but let’s face it, I am not going to, so it’s time to let go. I don’t have any videos of me as a child and I turned out pretty ok. (well, that could be argued, but…). I also got rid of some baby clothes from my kids that I was saving. I was thinking of making a quilt for each of them out of the baby clothes when they had kids, but I don’t quilt, and they’re not overly sentimental people. I am sure their life will be none-the-poorer if they don’t get a handmade quilt from their mom. I als got rid of the rag rug. (gasp) I was truly honest with myself and figured that it was never going to get finished. It has been a year!

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I went from a medium-sized Rubbermaid container to a large white Ikea storage box to a small white Ikea storage box for all of my personal mementos and miscellaneous stuff.

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This is my closet now, with everything that is in it labeled:
(the small, white Ikea storage box full of my personal mementos is in the empty drawer under my bed that I cleaned out during the wardrobe purge)

(Yes the cool vintage luggage set still has the key and the locks work! SCORE!!)
I have my 35 hanging clothes, everyone’s winter coats, my luggage set, the down duvet we use during the winter, my preserved wedding dress (which is one the “get-rid-of-it” fence), an iron and ironing board, the hamper, my jewelry, my daughter’s violin case, and an Ikea storage box with my winter boots/shoes and 1 extra purse in it.
While I did not take a “before” picture of my closet, here is my husband’s closet’s “before”. Mine looked pretty much the same, just with girlier stuff. Then there’s my closet now, which causes me to feel peaceful and calm instead of stressed out every time I look into it.

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Phew!
This was a long post, and I’m sorry if it bored you. I did this not to tell everyone what they need to keep and what they need to get rid, but because when I was thinking about doing this I couldn’t find any information about anyone’s processes and thoughts. It’s kind of nice to see inside someone else’s head sometimes. Everything I found online just basically said “get rid of stuff”. Well… yeah… but where do I start? It can be daunting to start paring down life and I hope my thoughts and discoveries about what’s important to me help someone out there in their journey to a simpler life.
Good luck!
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LIVE SIMPLY AND CHANGE THE WORLD!!