A lack of fade

As part of the declutter effort we went through a lot of photos to see what was worth holding on to. One of the things to go was my high school class photo, as it was a panoramic shot rolled into a cardboard tube. You could not flatten it out and it would never fit into an album or of the shelf frame. Plus, a classmate on facebook has already taken the time to scan it in, so there’s not really a need to keep it.

But that’s not what this post is about. The post is about a photo I found of myself, that my mom sent to me to show how much I looked like my son when I was his age. We both have the same expression, the same eyes, though apparently I have more of a sweet tooth as I was enjoying my cake at 1 year than Alex did. Alex prefers to crush the cake rather than eat it.

But that’s also not what this post is about. My apologies for two tangents in a row. It’s hard to not get nostalgic about old pictures. And that is what this post is about.

I wonder if there’s  a chart guesstimating the number of pictures taken of the course of the last 100 years. Digital has really only been on the scene for about 10-15 years, and before that it was film. Unless those pictures have been scanned in, most of those photos will slowly fade over time. The colors will distort, become blurry, especially if exposed to direct sunlight. Pictures get worn out, albums get lost or thrown away. I wouldn’t be surprised if more than a few pictures have gotten buried in the backyard.

There are few pictures of me when I was young. Fewer still of my folks. Fewer still of their folks, and likely none of their folks. But my wife and I have taken a lot of pictures of our son. It’s easy because we have a digital camera and there’s no real expense in snapping a photo like there was with film. A lot of these photos are uploaded to web albums, storing them in the cloud, plus local backups of everything should a hard drive ever fail. This means that my son will have a hyper detailed photo record of his youth. But would he, or anyone for that matter, really want that?

A lot of people using facebook started their accounts in middle and high school. In 10 years, when they’ve graduated from college and have entered the working force, will they want a link to that party they went to when they were 14 and in that awkward phase? How about a record of all the time spent playing Farmville instead of doing homework?  Some employers now look you up on facebook to get a sense of who you are outside of an interview setting. How professional are you really?

I don’t see social networking going away. I believe it will ultimately be necessary to establish and maintain an online identity. Kind of like how we take steps to ensure a good credit rating. It’s not mandatory, but your options will be much more restricted without it. But the cloud and the digital age means that everything you do is more likely to be recorded and preserved for you and potentially others to see. Is that wasteful? Does the threat of persistence limit our freedom of expression knowing that now, we really do have a permanent record? Our memories may fade, but now our photos will not.

War on paper–Victory!

That’s right, I’m calling it done! It was a hard battle. My paper shredder will never be the same, and it will be some time before we successfully clean up all of the little bits of shredded paper that the cats have migrated through the house, but aside from that it’s all gone.

I was set to call it about two weeks ago except that we found a couple of boxes lingering in the attic. One of them we kept, as it was full of my writings and I’m not about to give those up. The other box had finances from 98-2003 and a bunch of sentimental and academic records. Turns out I had my report card from kindergarten. Apparently I did quite well. What’s more, you’re going to have to take my word on that now as the proof has gone out with the recycling. All of the finance stuff was over 7 years old so I was able to shred all of that. In all, it took all of three hours to empty that box, and most of that was waiting to keep the shredder from overheating.

The filing cabinet is gone, and the table that held all of the loose papers has been taken down. Suddenly my office is huge! I’ve recovered all of the manuals that Chrome (grumble) corrupted. And it’s all backed up.

The war on clutter is not over, but we’ve made great strides. Nothing motivates de-cluttering like prepping a house for sale. We’ve begun packing things up and have rented out a small storage space. Part of that packing up means going through everything and seeing what we can get rid of. Thank goodness there’s no cap on freecycle and craigslist postings.  But that fight will not end even after we move. As jobs change, as kids grow, as things break and gift giving times pass, clutter will try to accumulate. The good fight must go on, and so shall we.