Awed, confused, surprised.

The difficulty of letting go

Lately we've been getting rid of old and excess stuff. Like those age old t-shirts, which I've kept "just in case". Or piles of papers, some computer science prints and such. And even books.

That's the most difficult thing for me: Letting go of books. Even the ones I never read. I feel like I'm doing something wrong. Clothes, furniture and prints are much easier. With books it feels like getting rid of a family member.

It's not that we just throw the old stuffs away. If they are good and recyclable they go to the local reuse centre or library or something.

Seeing how much stuff we have hoarded throughout these around ten years makes me think. Think about things, think about memories, think about buying stuff and throwing them away.

Photo by Casey Fleser.

4 replies | August 9, 2011 - 15:14 |

4 replies for "The difficulty of letting go"

Anna on August 10, 2011 - 17:17 said:

I love having hundreds of books lying around, I could never dare throw them away! I'm going to have a lot of trouble in two years when I have to move all of my stuff from Scotland back to Finland.. I don't even really want to think about it!

Mervi on August 10, 2011 - 20:50 said:

Hah I got that Anna. We are about to move (to a quite a lot smaller apartment). And some of the books are quite unnecessary. Like we had these medical books I had got from someplace. And other books we never ever are going to read.

I'm trying to be all rational... But it's really really painful.

Niko on August 12, 2011 - 00:43 said:

As Neil Gaiman said, if you ever worry about the future, buy or give a book to child.

I would switch to e-books but unfortunately many favorites of mine are not available in PDF, yet.

Mervi on August 12, 2011 - 00:48 said:

Good idea, Niko. I've actually bought some books to my niece for joulu and birthdays.

The books we have aren't unfortunately very suitable for kids. Those books would just mess their future. So we just pass them on to be recycled.

E-books are/would be nice, though they don't have that same "feeling of a book". That makes them easier to discard. ;)

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