Old greeting cards and neuroticism

[PerditaPickle]

What do people do with their old greeting cards -- birthday cards, gift tags & etc -- after the special occasion's been and gone ?

I reckon I've got at least three years worth stacked around my place, not knowing what to do with them.   I've a hard time parting with sentimental things.

[Aisling]

What do people do with their old greeting cards -- birthday cards, gift tags & etc -- after the special occasion's been and gone ?

I reckon I've got at least three years worth stacked around my place, not knowing what to do with them.   I've a hard time parting with sentimental things.

I can sympathize with with that problem. 

A few years ago when I downsized my living space, I hit on a solution that works for me. When I get cards, letters, and the like, I collect them in a small basket.  When the basket gets full, I'll scan or photograph the cards so that I can keep them in a digital format.  Most of the originals get either recycled or upcylcled for crafting. Ephemera that's of extraordinary sentimental value goes into an archival scrapbook, but those are few and far between. 

[Sobekemiti]

What do people do with their old greeting cards -- birthday cards, gift tags & etc -- after the special occasion's been and gone ?

I reckon I've got at least three years worth stacked around my place, not knowing what to do with them.   I've a hard time parting with sentimental things.

I've gone through a few card culls over the years. I don't have a lot of space to keep them so it forces me to be extremely picky about what I keep. So now I just have the ones I really cherish, and that's enough for me. Like, I don't feel the need to keep every single card someone's sent me, I just keep the really special ones. But getting to that point somtimes takes a while. Maybe try sorting through them and deciding if there are ones you know you definitely want to keep, and sorting the rest into a maybe pile to slowly sort through? That might make it a bit more manageable.

[Morag]

What do people do with their old greeting cards -- birthday cards, gift tags & etc -- after the special occasion's been and gone ?

I reckon I've got at least three years worth stacked around my place, not knowing what to do with them.   I've a hard time parting with sentimental things.

I understand the issue with parting with them. I'm pretty much completely unable to, with a few small exceptions. I think I've saved almost every single greeting card given to me over the years; throwing them out feels wrong.

So I eventually tape/glue them into my journals. I keep my journals forever, so it's a way to keep the cards forever without taking up more real estate than I want to.

However, being married has complicated this...up till now I've just saved cards to ME in my journals and such. But I haven't really addressed what to do with the cards given to US as a family. (I still have last year's Christmas cards hanging up on the raffia string I put up for them in the living room, because I'm not sure what to do with them. And Christmas cards from a few years ago are stored in a box somewhere.)

It probably doesn't matter and I could probably just do the same thing with them, as Mr Morag does not care at all (not the sentimental type), but something still feels...off? About putting them in a personal journal, at any rate.

Maybe I'll make a family scrapbook type thing and start collecting them in there. Hrm. Yes. I think I might.

(Hi I'm Morag and I tend to come to decisions by thinking out loud, either with my voice or via typing. Thanks for helping me figure that out! )

[Sefiru]

I've a hard time parting with sentimental things.

Not sure how much help I'll be with this, as I'm not very sentimental about objects. I will take a chance to shill for Marie Kondo, though; her method of literally saying goodbye to things makes a lot of sense.