why do i never throw anything away?

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mark s to self: "this electric typewriter has not worked for ten years, mark s"
reply: "yes but it was my dad's first ever electric typewriter, maybe i can get it mended and then it will pulse with the powerful artistic memory of a time that was and is no more?"
mark s to self: "i. where will you get it mended? nowhere ii. when will you get it mended? never"
reply: "yes b-b-but..."

― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 23 March 2003 14:59 (twenty-three years ago)

IT IS BROKEN = THROW IT AWAY

― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 23 March 2003 15:00 (twenty-three years ago)

b-b-but...

― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 23 March 2003 15:00 (twenty-three years ago)

forget it. trash it. sentimentality is for suckaz.

you'll thank me next time you have to move house. no broken typewriter = lighter load = less work = less exhausted mark s.

― phil-two (phil-two), Sunday, 23 March 2003 15:17 (twenty-three years ago)

but then again, you could throw it away, then see it a week later on Antique Roadshow getting appraised at $20,000 or something.

― phil-two (phil-two), Sunday, 23 March 2003 15:18 (twenty-three years ago)

man i should throw my car away.

― di smith (lucylurex), Sunday, 23 March 2003 15:19 (twenty-three years ago)

I have this problem to of holding on to things that are well past their use-by date. There is a psychological explanation for this weakness. Whether I believe it or not is another question but I won't go into it anyway.

― ali (ali), Sunday, 23 March 2003 15:29 (twenty-three years ago)

also see my posts to "ladies" thread. i hate being a tool of everything i deplore.

― di smith (lucylurex), Sunday, 23 March 2003 15:31 (twenty-three years ago)

Mark, you never saw the council flat that I lived in with The Dirt Queen. This is what happens when you truly never throw anything away. It terrified me. I will never, ever be like that. Never.

(then again, the only thing I won't throw away is CDs and clothes. Everything else goes.)

― kate (suzy), Sunday, 23 March 2003 15:33 (twenty-three years ago)

I have a stash of travelcards somewhere to remind me of good nights out - problem is whenever I stumble across them I'm always like "12 June 1999 - WTF?" or something

― DG (D_To_The_G), Sunday, 23 March 2003 15:38 (twenty-three years ago)

We've had to throw *tons* of stuff out in anticipation of this house move that might happen sometime before I'm 65. Shocking amount of garbage. To be fair, most of it belonged to my late father... clearing out 'his' garage was a... unique experience. Amongst his horde: a stash of porno mags, reams and reams of blue piping (he was an HGV driver), and a bag full of old pumps I wore for P.E. in primary school. And that's just scratching the surface.

― ChristineSH (chrissie1068), Sunday, 23 March 2003 15:46 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh, he'd also kept a huge old cuddly Womble I had when I was a kid too. Stuffed underneath piles of other junk. It was not very clean to say the least...

― ChristineSH (chrissie1068), Sunday, 23 March 2003 15:55 (twenty-three years ago)

Mark, you can just put that old typewriter on your new shelves - more evidence that they are an absolute panacea!

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 23 March 2003 16:00 (twenty-three years ago)

christ, ive got a half a room full of stuff that i need to go through. ive been putting it off for 4 months now. and this is just everything from the past 8 years. before that i lost everything due to housing issues/lack of home, so maybe this is the reason.

― kephm, Sunday, 23 March 2003 16:13 (twenty-three years ago)

The Womble was Orinocho, BTW. I'm being really trivial now.

― ChristineSH (chrissie1068), Sunday, 23 March 2003 16:15 (twenty-three years ago)

Maybe you're a descendant of the Collyer Brothers.

― bnw (bnw), Sunday, 23 March 2003 17:06 (twenty-three years ago)

It's hard to get rid of old things, but I always feel much better once I finally do get rid of them. It makes me feel more free, somehow. Remember, they are just objects -- you don't need to hold on to them to recall any happy memories.

― Nicole (Nicole), Sunday, 23 March 2003 17:21 (twenty-three years ago)

do not throw away, i think ph4y would not approve

― ron (ron), Sunday, 23 March 2003 17:39 (twenty-three years ago)

Getting rid of old things!= throwing them away

With things like old clothes or even the electric typewriter, there are always charity shops that are usually quite happy to take them.

― Nicole (Nicole), Sunday, 23 March 2003 17:41 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't like throwing things away. Even things that are broken, I feel I should honour their memory by storing them away rather than condemning them to the bin. I'll occasionally sort a few things to go to charity shops, but I usually take half of it back before it goes. I like to keep a track of my past, I guess.

― jel -- (jel), Sunday, 23 March 2003 18:46 (twenty-three years ago)

Sadly, none of the stuff in dad's garage was remotely unseable, so it had to go in a skip.

But we did do one good thing. I have tons of books and I had to get rid of a load from childhood. Mom gave 'em to the local church jumble sale. Some old guy came to pick 'em up. A real big pile. I did keep a bunch of my old books (anyone remember Fabulous Animals, David Attenborough?), inc. a couple of items my nan had inscribed to me personally. ('To Christy' -- she was the only person to use that particular abbreviation, for some reason.) I kept a really poor children's dictionary w/colour illos. So I held onto a few memories, in between being absolutely ruthless...

― ChristineSH (chrissie1068), Sunday, 23 March 2003 19:53 (twenty-three years ago)

my dad always makes excuses to not throw things away. v annoying.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Sunday, 23 March 2003 20:10 (twenty-three years ago)

My dad didn't make excuses... he let mom throw stuff away and covertly retrieve it and hide it in that goddamned garage!

― ChristineSH (chrissie1068), Sunday, 23 March 2003 21:02 (twenty-three years ago)

ha! my mom gets tired of some of these excuses and so she just throws stuff away. most isn't important but she has thrown a couple of things that we needed in the past.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Sunday, 23 March 2003 21:08 (twenty-three years ago)

Mom does have a thing about clutter. So it was nice to get onto her about her not throwing away stinky old Lottery tickets the other day...

― ChristineSH (chrissie1068), Sunday, 23 March 2003 21:13 (twenty-three years ago)

keep - items that have emotional significance like your dads old typewriter.
get rid of - items that have emotional significance like an ex's 'love letters'

― donna (donna), Sunday, 23 March 2003 21:30 (twenty-three years ago)

No, keep everything. Because you never know.

― Chris P (Chris P), Sunday, 23 March 2003 21:51 (twenty-three years ago)

mark, I would worry more about the talking to yourself bit.

― That Girl (thatgirl), Sunday, 23 March 2003 21:59 (twenty-three years ago)

Everything? How about, say, used condoms? (Do I even want to know?)

― ChristineSH (chrissie1068), Sunday, 23 March 2003 22:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I know a girl with a tyrannical boyfriend who throws away her post unopened on the grounds that she is a hoarder. They had to buy rail tickets twice when we went on holiday once cause he'd chucked them out. She was surprisingly understanding about it.

― N. (nickdastoor), Monday, 24 March 2003 01:19 (twenty-three years ago)

I spent the weekend sorting through some bus tickets and assorted tat kept for 'sentimental' reasons. I need such a tyrannical boyfriend.

― Lara (Lara), Monday, 24 March 2003 17:08 (twenty-three years ago)

Not the entire weekend, obviously. The rest of the time I was out being, um, glamorous and, um, popular and , um, a face, y'know. Oh yes.

― Lara (Lara), Monday, 24 March 2003 17:09 (twenty-three years ago)

t: "mark s this cake tin is totally rusty and so is this over tray and these whatever-they-ares preserved in syrup will leave the jar unaided and eat all hackney alive if you ever dare undo the lid — so can i chuck them...?"
mark s: *visibly torn*

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 5 April 2003 16:40 (twenty-three years ago)

If you film things in syrup eating Hackney, I reckon there's money in it.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 5 April 2003 17:01 (twenty-three years ago)

two years pass...

Did mark s ever get rid of that typewriter? Or indeed the things in syrup?

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Thursday, 23 March 2006 17:10 (twenty years ago)

Hackney still stands.

― Anna (Anna), Thursday, 23 March 2006 17:18 (twenty years ago)

...and books. I can never throw a book away. Even if it's a rubbish trashy romance novel that someone gave me by mistake!

― ILX: Where you go when you're sick of being NICE to people? (kate), Thursday, 23 March 2006 17:27 (twenty years ago)

four weeks pass...

My mother saves plastic ziploc bags, paper towels that haven't been used, napkins, the little plastic "Caesar" dog food dishes, styrofoam cups, paper towel and toilet paper rolls, and KFC lids from their meals...There are a million more things she saves, but too many to list.

My main point and the saying that keeps me from saving crap, is "If you can't take it to your grave, get rid of it."

― CrystalF, Thursday, 20 April 2006 17:27 (twenty years ago)

I threw away a large stack of hardback books the other day. I didn't even put them in the "free box," just right into the dumpster.

― Washable School Paste (sexyDancer), Thursday, 20 April 2006 18:11 (twenty years ago)

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