When my mother passed and we had to clean out my parent's house, she had boxes of the same kinds of things. Old report cards, drawings and school work from 40+ years ago. It was nice to see that she cared to save it but it was of no interest beyond that. And it was pretty clear that she herself never looked at it, as the boxes were packed away in closets and obviously hadn't been touched since they were put there.
Stuff causes stress. It's really true. Even if it's mostly out of the way, every time you see it it will cause some stress about whether it should be moved, reorganized, saved, or thrown away. The house I grew up in was always cluttered and I'm bad about it myself. Every once in a while I will order a roll-off dumpster to the house and get rid of things that have accumulated over the past 10 years or so. It's a relief but then it starts over again.
If there's one habit I wish I had it would be to regularly and ruthlessly get rid of stuff that I don't use anymore.
I'm no contact with the parent that has my childhood home. As a result of this I've become very unsentimental, after a few painful years of trying to retrieve the few items I cared about, only for that parent to realise they had value to me and use them for leverage. I have given up on stuff in general.
I am not exactly a minimalist, but I freely give away and loan things to people who might get more value put of them, it's enabled me to move across the country multiple times for good opportunities at very little notice.
Stuff causes stress. It's really true. Even if it's mostly out of the way, every time you see it it will cause some stress about whether it should be moved, reorganized, saved, or thrown away. The house I grew up in was always cluttered and I'm bad about it myself. Every once in a while I will order a roll-off dumpster to the house and get rid of things that have accumulated over the past 10 years or so. It's a relief but then it starts over again.
If there's one habit I wish I had it would be to regularly and ruthlessly get rid of stuff that I don't use anymore.