My wife and I have found that there are items that should be tossed in every decade of life, including your 30s 40s, 50s… etc.
Our personal motto when it comes to decluttering is: “When in doubt, throw it out!” The problem was that I had many interviews, news stories and programs archived but nowhere to keep It all. Then when we were undergoing home renovations and trying to decide what to pack or toss. That served us well and since then by clearing out years’ worth of stuff. Remember the Carlin quotes, my stuff and your shit. Interestingly enough, my Carlin interview was also loaded.
While I’m decidedly a minimalist, I get that not everyone shares my zest for getting rid of things but that didn’t include my tapes, CDs and DVD collections of stuff from a seasoned journalist and Media Maestro’s eclectic life well-lived.
I highly recommend classifying your recorded memories and offering the to the archives. They are a non for profit library of valuable media. I initiated Archive donation of boxes full of media plus some equipment. They confirmed pickup possible; VHS/audio tapes digitized; UMATIC/reel to reels still need processing.
https://archive.org/details/sotoarchive
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