JENN McKINLAY: Anyone who has read my input over the past eight and a half years that I’ve been a Red, knows that one of my favorite things in life is to throw things out. Old clothes? Good will. Old art? Same. Old jewelry? Give it away. Anything broken beyond repair (I am a big repurpose and recycle person) goes to the dump. Thanks for your service and Adios!
I just don’t like stuff and I don’t keep things…unless they have sentimental value and then I slam into the brick wall of nostalgia and I just can’t. Photographs of old boyfriends? Still have them (in an album in a closet somewhere but I still have them). A granny square sweater my grandmother made for me in 1972 when I was a wee tot? Yup, I still have it on a shelf in the top of my closet. Why? It doesn’t even fit anymore! Obviously. Why can’t I unravel it and repurpose the yarn? I just can’t.
I thought I was a stoic/sentimental sort. I keep some things but not all. So imagine my surprise when I observed a recent breakup between a Hooligan and his Plus One and he deleted everything that was digital – texts, pictures, videos, and any connections through social media gone. Physical gifts, tchotchkes, cards, and print photos in an album were all tossed in the dumpster.
He had me stand witness to the purge and I’m not exaggerating when I say I started to sweat and felt a little queasy. I asked “Don’t you want to keep anything to remember the good times?” His answer: “No.” I thought it was because he was a dude so I asked the other Hooligan’s Plus One (who was also an observer of the purge) if she’d tossed everything from former relationships and she said, “Yes, absolutely. That stuff just makes you sad.”
Y’all, I was so surprised I’m still processing.
So, tell me, do you purge everything from relationships - romantic or otherwise - when they end badly? Or do you hang onto the mug you bought on the road trip, the baseball cap at the ballgame, and such to remember the moment shared with a little nostalgia? Like, seriously, do I really have to throw out the skull earring that belonged to my punk rock boyfriend in 1989? Because, yes, I still have it.
RHYS BOWEN: My romances were back in the days when we wrote letters to each other so I had kept all the letters my boyfriend had written to me. When I had finally moved on I ceremonially burned them. Now I wished I’d kept them as it wasn’t an acrimonious break up and I would have enjoyed remembering good times together. I don’t think I’ve kept anything sentimental from any former romances, but remember I moved to Australia and only took the minimum with me!
LUCY BURDETTE: Not so much on the old romances, but I do have boxes of letters I can’t throw out. Lots of them were sent to my grandparents from my dad when he was in the army. I have tons of old photos too that I keep meaning to organize when I have the time. HA! And letters and cards from many people over the years. It’s sad to me that people send greetings and notes by email or text–they’re too easy to lose or delete. What about our future memoirists? Where will they find their material?
HALLIE EPHRON: No old letters from ex-Xes here, either. I have a wonderful book of photographs of me and my high school, sweetheart. He was the nicest guy, a lot older than me, but not “the one.” My high school home life was a disaster and he kept me sane.
The bad exes weren’t writers, and maybe that should’ve been the tip-off that they weren’t for me. Jerry, of course, wooed me with cartoons and I saved all of them.
DEBORAH CROMBIE: I’ve never been particularly sentimental about saving mementos from relationships, but I’ve never done a slash-and-burn, either. I think, maybe, somewhere, I still have the airmail letters my ex wrote me when he was in Scotland and I was still in Texas. If I ever turn them up, I will definitely save them. (I don’t even want to contemplate the boxes of photos in my office closet…”)
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Such a great question. I have too many mugs and t-shirts, those are the irresistible things for me at conventional and bookstores. (Mugs can be difficult, because they are impossible to pack.) For the past 20 years, I have kept my name badge from every event I’ve attended, and it’s kinda wonderful to see the descriptions under my name go from “debut author” and “first time” to “Keynote speaker” and “Guest of honor.” (The backs of TWO office chairs are filled with them–I cannot even imagine counting them.) And I have a bottle of wine that Sue Grafton gave me. Keeping forever.
Love letters, no, I have maybe…two. And some various other pivotal paperwork. And photos, sure. But I rarely look at any of it. And as for digital, my computer is full of stuff I have no idea is there.
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: You know, this makes me realize I’m not one to collect or keep mementos in the first place (unlike Ross, who saved every piece of paper from every Bouchercon we ever attended…) I do have love letters, somewhere, from both Ross and prior beaus. I figured I’d add a codicil to my will stating they can be only be read by my grandchildren after they’ve turned twenty-five. They’ll think my flaming youth is interesting and historical, not horrifying.
Otherwise, the only sentimental items I can’t get rid of are some personal things Ross cherished and a few - few! - pieces related to my children. I grew up in the military, and of necessity my mother purged whenever we moved, and I suspect I got her practicality.
No ex-relationship letters or that sort of thing to consider . . . . but I am truly a sentimental saver whether it's letters or mementos or something that was my mom's, I definitely have it.
ReplyDeleteI am a packrat but have kept nothing from past romances!
ReplyDeleteI don't remember purposefully throwing things out like Hooligan did, but I can't think of anything I have from an ex.
We did not write letters or give each other cute keepsakes.
I'm a purger.
ReplyDeleteIf I had had anything like that to begin with it would not have survived The Great Purge of 2024. I didn’t even keep my yearbooks. I did, however, still keep my autobiography from 6th grade…at least I think I did as I haven’t been in that box since we moved.
ReplyDeleteWow. I am pretty sure I have letters from exes. I know I have all kinds of letters and postcards from family and friends, not to mention the ubiquitous box of photographs. I'm terribly sentimental, and I hit a big brick wall when I try to sort through it all.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, are the Reds having Happy Hour tonight at 7?
DeleteNope, next Happy Hour is July 30 at 8 pm.
DeleteSorry, I meant 5:00 pm EDT. The next HH date/time was listed on the top of the June 28 blog post. https://www.jungleredwriters.com/2025/06/how-to-chill-in-heat-wave.html
DeleteThanks, Grace. I'd heard about the July 30 date but not that today's had been canceled.
DeleteThe REDS indicated a schedule change during summer months at the end of the June 7 HH live event.
DeleteAha. I missed the June 7 HHour.
DeleteRhys, like you I have all the letters of the courtship, and it was short (3 mos). It early in 1977, when talking was long distance, and a letter was 12 cents. We both liked to write – much more than talk, so the letters were long, and funny! Yes, I have them – just a small brown envelope. I don’t know if he knows or not. He wrote chronicles of our life starting after I was first pregnant, I think; definitely after Laura was born. This went on until we had a computer, possibly. He wrote in those hard-cover daily diaries, where one page is one day. They are all collected on a shelf in the basement. They will probably get opened when the archivists decide whether we were important enough to read about.
ReplyDeleteAs for other stuff – I have a baby book for Laura, just some things in it. Michael – less. Elizabeth – just her name and a bit of hair, and poor old Tristan – not even a book. Kid’s art – one school one from Laura, only because Jack thought it was fun. I do have framed photography by Laura and a lot of framed original art by Tristan, but I notice none have stood the test of time (light does terrible things) – I am sure when we are dead, they will be land-fill.
Now as for grandchildren art – yes, I do (semi) ooh and ahh when given them, and have to hold myself back to wait until they are gone to put the art in the fire. I prefer when they give me cookies – I can eat the evidence. Guess I am not sentimental at all.
Oh, Jenn, you old softy. I knew it!
ReplyDeleteI was just talking to my mom about this very thing last night. In addition to my own and my husband's nostalgic past memorialized in kept letters (including from past loves, as well as to and from one another), photos, and other memorabilia, we have Middle Daughter's kept stuff, too. She has boxes and boxes (and boxes!) of every notebook she ever wrote in, starting in grade school and up through college, along with all kinds of projects and books she wanted to keep. Over the weekend she was apparently going through a storage unit she's had now for three years (!), with all the belongings that won't fit into the ever smaller places she has lived. Her boyfriend is appalled that she's paying good money for the rental. Ha. He doesn't even know about her cache here in Ohio. It would free up a lot of space here if she would come and just decide what to pitch.
But I have no room to talk. When we moved six years ago I had boxes of memorabilia from our decades together. I started to go through it, invited Steve to see some of the treasures, and we ended up laughing and crying, and deciding we couldn't do it right then. So we still have all those kids' drawings and letters and concert programs cluttering up what should be more useful storage space. What I need to do is just photograph everything and throw away most of the actual stuff.
I've got letters from old boyfriends and other memorabilia, mostly in a big box in the basement. One of my boyfriends was a long term guest at the hotel where I worked and I managed to, um, take home the (of course paper in those days) archive of one of his bills. I believe it's still in the box in the basement. I never wanted to get rid of everything when relationships ended. I probably should ditch everything now. I can't believe my son would ever be interested in any of it. I, on the other hand, found my parents' early letters to each other fascinating. There was a section torn out of one of mom's diaries--we think it was probably about "Battleship George" or another beau.
ReplyDeleteJENN: Have you tried trashie? Instead of the dumpster, you can send anything broken into the package and send it off to be recycled. I have used trashie. I try to recycle when I can. It is easy to send used items to trashie, once you figure it out. I think you order a trashie for ? twenty dollars ?, then fill it with old items, and bring it to the post office. With old electronics, there are electronic fairs where they collect old electronics. I try to avoid contributing to landfills if I can.
ReplyDeleteIt can be tough when one feels betrayed and I can understand why your kiddo would throw everything away after a bad bread up. People move on with their lives after bad break ups in different ways.
There is a box somewhere with letters from my former boyfriends. And box of photos. I still have this little prize that one of my boyfriends won for me at a summer country fair. When I travelled abroad, I sent postcards to myself and I still have them.
When I graduated from the first grade, our schoolteacher gave me a copy of Disney's Cinderella and thankfully she wrote my name in the book because it was almost gifted to someone else. I said "wait a minute, it was a gift".
Still trying to declutter and Karen in Ohio's idea about photographing everything is a great idea!
I'm remembering I had a drawerful of letters from an old boyfriend. We wrote to each other every day even though we saw each other on the weekend. Back then phone calls were just too expensive. Everyone once in a while I think about those letters and wonder what happened to them. I assume that at some point my mother got rid of them. I hope she didn't read them first although they weren't x-rated or anything like that. Although maybe she had asked me what I want to do with them, but if so I don't remember that. If she did I probably would have said burn them all.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I wonder what happened to things like sweaters and socks that I knitted for him. I wonder what he did with them. He was the one who broke up with me. He was the oldest in a very large family to so maybe his younger siblings got the knitwear. In any case, I really don't care; they required hand washing anyway, so much more trouble than they were worth.
As for other boyfriends, I think I got rid of their stuff immediately. But in those cases I was the one who did the breaking up. Maybe that makes a difference.
As I have mentioned before, last year we did the big downsize from a 4-bedroom home wth basement and office to a 3-bedroom (of which one serves as office), no basement condo. I forced myself to take that opportunity to purge a lot of stuff I had previously held onto. Though even now it kind of broke my heart, the wedding album from marriage #1 (which ended in 1985) went into the dumpster. Most (though not QUITE all) high school memorabilia was tossed. I went through boxes and boxes of physical photos and reduced it to two large plastic tubs of the most important/representative. I had saved all my Franklin Day Planner binders from the time I started using that system in the early 1980's, and I went through them and pulled out the pages where I had journaled and tossed the rest. It did not come easily to me, but I'm glad I did it. One of my motivating factors was that if I didn't do it, someday my poor only child would be forced to go through all that. I would not wish that on him!
ReplyDeleteEmotionally, though, I think I had developed a tendency to hold onto things because my mother ruthlessly got rid of EVERYTHING she had been holding for me when she decided to move to a different city at retirement. At the time there wasn't much discussion about it and I'm not sure I would have objected, but later I really felt the loss of all that childhood stuff. So I probably erred on the side of holding onto too many things "just in case." And even now, I kept a lot of memorabilia from my son's childhood.