The Photo Albatross

Victory! I declare victory in the photo organization campaign. Well, partial victory. Or victory of a sort. Or one tiny step forward....

I last organized photos in 1999. I used to sort them into albums when Sophie took naps during visits to my in-laws. I’d bring the envelopes of photos, paper to make labels and headings, and empty albums. By the end of the visit, I’d be up-to-date. When naps ended, so did my available time.  Now the album gap is sixteen years plus.

Beginning in 2011, I’d print out photos from my digital camera to send to my mother, writing elaborate captions on the back. She didn’t have a computer, and that way I’d keep her current on our doings. When she died, I inherited six years of already-captioned photos. What could be easier to organize?

Except that after I’d loaded 2011-2014 into an album, I discovered that 2011 was missing our trip to Panama. I had to find those photos on the computer and get them printed. Then I had to take out the already-organized 2012-2014, insert Panama in the right spot to keep everything chronological, and re-put in the events after that.

Now I’ve discovered a piece of 2015 that’s missing. Things are complicated because not all photos are from my digital camera. Some come via Facebook, some via texts, and some are on Sophie’s phone and lost to parents without a lot of relentless reminders. Our niece Kelly’s wedding seems to be in all places – and no places.

So, if I have to re-do 2015, then (technically) I’m only current on four years of the sixteen year gap. My percentage of victory is down to about 25%. Not exactly a “mission accomplished.”

Once, about thirty years ago, I laid out every single photo I possessed on the living room floor. I batched them by years. Things were easier then: there was only one source for photos (my camera and prints given me) and I still remembered what the photos were photos of. Now, as I keep de-cluttering, new stashes of photos keep turning up. How can I tell one birthday party from another, yet another cross-country running race, another Girl Scout activity, many Runs for Women?

Whenever she visits, Sophie pulls out the albums of her birth-to-seven years. It’s fun to look at them; she’s cute and fun. But will albums of eight-to-18 be as interesting? Or am I just creating a never-to-be-consulted archive?

My sister is stuck with the family photo albums that no one wants simply because she’s the only one with a basement. And digital photos are multiplying exponentially – does anyone ever sit down for a delightful time browsing through old photos on their computer? Do you? So just what are we preserving all these photographic images for?

I must admit, as I’ve been adding in photos from 2011 and 2012, I turned to Tim and said, “Y’know, we have a nice life.” Until I saw all our adventures laid out, I wasn’t conscious of them as a body, as a “nice life.” It was nice to remember them.

Maybe the secret is a limit: only five photos max per occasion. Maybe we should schedule photo expirations: culling down to five per year max when they’re 25 or more years old?

Because I’ll bet your relationship to photos is the same as mine: the prospect of organizing them is a dread weight, an oppressive to-do, a recurring nightmarish “should.” Maybe my family should just sit down, open up the boxes and the digital photo libraries, laugh and hoot at the photos, make some piles, and toss the rest. I remember Marie Kondo saying toss first, then organize. Maybe this is a nice Thanksgiving vacation, family type activity.

It’s got to beat drowning in unsorted photos.

How much of "us" resides in our stuff?

My friend Chris has found herself the caretaker of the personal memorabilia of a man she barely knew. She has his diplomas, photo albums, letters, awards and trophies. It’s all in one box that she acquired when she moved all her mother’s belongings out of Arizona and into her garage.

The man is her mother’s second husband, not Chris’ father. Chris says, “He had no children and his first wife is dead so I guess I feel I have some sort of responsibility for his personal effects.”

As she described this to us – De-Clutterers Anonymous – we said, “Get rid of it.” But this wasn’t really the typical de-cluttering dilemma.

Chris feels it’s like this man’s life, that it deserves more respect than taking it to the dump. That these are all that’s left of a life that was lived, so how should it be … jettisoned?

This is an interesting question with a bunch of different answers. First, I guess, is the “it’s not his life, it’s just stuff” answer. That once our lives end, we are only the memories in whomever’s mind so the stuff is just … stuff. You can’t take it with you because it’s not you. It’s Things.

But there’s another metaphysical aspect to all this: how much of ourselves gets imbued in our physical possessions, the things we choose to save? When does the stuff we save represent “us” and when is it just “stuff”? And isn’t there some intermediate step in there, when it’s “our stuff”?

Is memory a necessary part of that? So if I hold my father’s tools, am I somehow connected to him because they were his and I remember him or is there something of him residing in the tools? What if, like Chris, you don’t even know him or have memories of him; are the objects devoid of meaning? Does it matter that once he had meaning for her mother?

Chris won’t take his stuff to the dump. She thinks she’s going to burn it. The De-Clutterers thought that was fitting. What does burning mean that the dump doesn’t?

As a hard-core recycler, I actually do things like take trophies into trophy places, vases into florists, paper to the recycling center. This could be a way of giving further life to his now-ended life, like donating corneas.

On the one hand, reflecting on all this just makes me want to get rid of more stuff so no one has to fret over how respectful or disrespectful, painful or uncomfortable, disposing of it is. “I’m not there” after all. But on the other hand, I gave my stuff to the library archives so I’d be “somewhere.” Obviously, thinking about all this is complicated and fraught with … feelings. I’m going to bed.

What To Do with The Diary

Every now and then, while Sophie’s visiting, we’ll hear hoots of laughter, and she’ll say something like, “January 9. Tonight I get to go over to Helen’s house because daddy couldn’t find a sitter.” Or “April 22. Today I went with Helen to walk her dog Lefse. Lefse sure can run. She pulled me down smack on the concrete.” Then “April 23. My nasty scrape (from Lefse) the scab grew into my pajamas (stuck), Mommy yanked, Ahhhhh!!! Wa wa sob!!!”

She’s going through her 3rd grade diary, and we’re all hooting and laughing.

While in Portland, Tim and I saw an evening’s performance of Mortified. Locals go through their attics and basements, finding old diaries and “artifacts,” and then they read them to an audience. It’s so hilarious, there’s now even a documentary about it. We heard from “socially stunted home-schooled girl” with a crush on a boy in Sunday School; a young New Yorker who did “a secret thing at night when he was in bed.”

But I sent my journals to the shredder and recycling.

There were two issues I considered before doing that:

1. If I ever became famous, my journals would be valuable history. Like coming across Beethoven’s journal about how he felt about going deaf. Or the development of Hemingway’s writing from youth to old man.


2. If I didn’t become famous, my journals might provide valuable insights to the people of 3015 trying to figure out what life was like for a regular, ordinary inhabitant of earth. I got this idea when some diary was recently uncovered from a plain-old woman in the 1600s, and everyone said it was a “major find.”

I rejected both those arguments:

1. I wasn’t going to become famous, but even if I were, my journals were about how I felt about discovering sex, how I felt about feeling lonely, how I felt about making a mistake, how I felt about which path to take, etc. I must admit, they were a terrific example of teenage/20- and 30-something voice. It was right there on the page, out loud and glaring.


   
   Aiiieee, even I had to close it up. All that angst, those ups and downs! I felt at risk of contact angst just reading it. If I read it out loud to an audience, either they’d all need psychological counseling or they’d send me away for more.


2. 2015 is not like the 1600s. We have plenty of documentation of ordinary life now. My journals would be no “major find.” 

I’m very happy with the empty, de-cluttered space where the journals used to be … and the assurance that my daughter won’t come across them.

But if I could locate the little pink diary with the tiny lock that I kept when I was eight, that would be fun to read. I’d laugh and hoot over that.

De-cluttering in High Gear

I wrote an article for Alaska Magazine once about Alaska’s history going to garage sales, recycling centers, or the dump. People who were part of our history got old, maybe moved Outside, maybe died. Oblivious kids just trashed it.

We know how easily that happens. When we moved my mother out of the house we all lived in for fifty years, we started out with great plans: give the office supplies to elementary schools, give the tools to vocational education, give the original Ms. magazines to a women’s studies program. But after uncovering the 400th pencil, the 200th matchbook, and an attic full of packing sponge – packing sponge? – it just started … getting tossed.

And didn’t we all say: “I’m going to make sure my kids don’t have to deal with all my crap!”

This is the Difficulty Scale for De-cluttering, from easiest to hardest (a first draft):

1. Other person’s stuff – Easiest!


2. Broken stuff you finally believe you won’t get around to fixing


3. Stuff you will never ever use again and don’t want to be reminded about, it’s in the way, AND you have identified the perfect recipient who thinks it’s treasure


4. Stuff already in storage and you come across it and it’s been unacknowledged and undiscovered for so long it has retreated from your consciousness AND you have identified the perfect recipient who thinks it’s treasure


5. #2 and #3 above with no perfect recipient but if you donate it to a nonprofit’s garage sale, maybe it can turn into treasure for them


6. Stuff of sentimental value. This can be anything from your past and you think you might like to look over it and remember it fondly some day. You imagine sitting in a comfortable chair, maybe a cozy fire, and you’re sifting through a box of memorabilia and grandchildren are oohing and aahing about how interesting it all is.


   
   Dream on.



7. Stuff that might come in handy some day. Ugh, my personal struggle.

Back when I wrote that article for Alaska Magazine, I urged people to make contact with the Museum or the Library to see if their stuff had value and to arrange in advance where it would end up. Let’s see, that was about 20 years ago.

These things take time….

So I called the Library and today Arlene from Archives came and took cartons of stuff from my house.

It started out easy enough: empty my Daily News columns from the file cabinet. But this is the thing about de-cluttering: once you get on a roll, it’s infectious! I gathered the files from the plays I wrote, the short stories, the essays, the book reviews. The CDs of interviews. The audio files from my radio show. And the stuff they didn’t want? Hey, I’d already said goodbye to it; it could go in recycling now.

Every now and then, I’d think, “But what if I want to look back on this?” or “What if I want to share it with Sophie?” or “What if someone asks me for some information about it?”

Philosophical Considerations: Do I think all I am is my past? How much of my present and future need to refer to that past?

Actual Considerations: Just get this shit out of my house!