What do you do with leftover memories?

I am a bit of a memory hoarder. No, it’s true! My actual memory sort of epically sucks and usually if I have a picture or a memento from something that happened I can remember it better. My roommates, Caitlin and Dana, were laughing at a shared memory that, apparently, I should have been able to laugh with as well because I was there. I asked if there were any Facebook pictures of the get together. Caitlin said there wasn’t. My quick reply was “No Picture, No Memory”.

Every year throughout college and high school I had a box for each of the 4 years I went to Villa and PSU. In these boxes I would put things that I wanted to keep to remember that moment. This made it really easy for my Mom, Katie, Kristen, and John to put together my scrapbook when I graduated from High school because I had all these pictures and memories in boxes under my bed.

Every so often I go through the boxes. Sometimes I remember what the memento stood for, other times I don’t. Sometimes it’s easy to understand – like the program from the high school plays I was in. And sometimes I have no clue what is associated with – like the stuffed Woodstock bird from Peanuts. I have no clue what memory is associated with him (usually meaning I have lost that memory for all time). When this happens I just throw out the item (or in the case of Woodstock give it away to the Salvation Army) and when I can – I consolidate those boxes.

Facebook makes it easier for me to remember things. Everyone has pictures from everything and mostly it is in chronological order.

But what do you do about the things that you don’t know if you want to keep?

I use to have a box of stuff from Jason, my freshman year boyfriend. It had a weird smelling candle, a hedgehog stuff toy thing, and some letters/birthday cards he had written me or conversations we had over AIM. After sophomore year that box found its way under my bed at home and didn’t resurface until I moved out to Manayunk for the first time where it was placed at the top of my closet shelf with my other memory boxes. I didn’t actually go through it until I was moving out of my apartment in Harrisburg, a year and a half after its rediscovery. Going through the box brought back some great memories but also some old pain. I threw out most of the stuff and kept a few things like the candle. (You never know when the power is going to go out).

I didn’t know then, and I still don’t know now, what to keep and throw away from these relationship boxes (good grief it sounds like I am back in 4^th grade when I had box of stuff that reminded me of my crush). I just made an educated guess as to what I would want and what I wouldn’t. But to be honest, this is the first time I have thought about that box since I threw it out. Does it mean that I shouldn’t have kept anything from it? I can’t even tell you where some of the things I kept are. Maybe in the attic with all the books and stuff I kept from College or maybe in the college memory box in my closet.

Now I am in the problem of going through the “box” from my last relationship. Work is switching out my old Dell and giving me a new Lenovo. On my work computer is some personal folders that I need to move to my computer at home. One of these files is of my last relationship. A poem, photos, and saved text messages. It's been long enough that we are both over the relationship and remained good friends but honestly I don’t know what to do with the folder. What do I keep? What do I put in the recycle bin? How do you decide which memories to keep and which to let go of?

What are your thoughts? Did you have a “box” of old relationships? Did you keep it or throw it away?