Purging Travel Paraphernalia
 

Paraphernalia, 1. law. <i> Those items of personal property which the law allows a married woman to deal with or keep as her own. </i>

I live in a small house. Ruthlessness when it comes to accumulation is the order of the day. But Spouse is holding out on getting rid of (help me, please!) clothes that include polyester pants, and I don’t mean the ‘nice’ kind of polyester, either. (Does polyester burn? Just wondering, just wondering….)

He points accusingly at my stacks of travel notes. And what about all those pamphlets I couldn’t seem to resist collecting on our journeys and toting around? Just how important is it that I keep an old ferry schedule for Lake Como, or a history of some obscure aristocrat’s family?

He has a point. Or rather, he has an out.

He does, really. So why do I still hang onto this stuff?

How long do you keep your travel research – outside of the stuff you keep in albums?

And how would you get rid of polyester pants?
:))

Hi Sue,

Those important historical and cultural artifacts that you have so carefully preserved for future generations should not be destroyed.

One day the Sue xx yy Collection of Foreign Memorabilia will be the basis of the Smithsonian Institution's American Museum of Cross Cultural History.

As for polyester pants, they are indestructible.

((I))

Hi there!
Polyester DOES burn (trust me!), so to get rid of the pants, launder them and IRON THEM ON HOT HOT HOT. If you should by accident leave the iron in place for a little too long, and the polyester melts, well, what can you do? Use an old iron for this -- trust me.
As for old travel stuff -- why not select out a few bits and put them into scrapbooks with your trip photos? Not that I am a follower of the scrapbook cult, but this is one way to &quot;hide your hoard&quot;. The other way is to put it all in a box, stick it in the attic, tell hubby that it's all gone, discard the polyester pants, then retrieve the box...

Take the pants and <b>put them on</b> using several belts if you have to the hold them up. <b>Wear them around the house</b> and do all the housework in them..or better yet, <b>wear them to bed</b> he'll soon get the message and beg you to dispose of them.

Anything over 5 years old can go. Things have changed too much for either polyester pants or travel information to have any value.

If neither of you can stand to part with these things, then get plastic boxes for storage, one per person, and keep whatever fits in your own box.

Do you have a basement or attic? Mrs. Fly is a throw-awayer. I'm a packrat.

She doesn't mind that I have a couple of big boxes in an out-of-the way corner of the basement where I can squirrel away my useless treasures from the past.

packrat, squirrel--no, I look nothing like a rodent.

ira

excellent idea. Perhaps I will even be able to claim said items as a tax deduction under 'gifts to the country'.

intrepid1

Problem: I get rid of household tasks about as quickly as I get rid of my travel stuff. I've decided the occasional dust bunny makes for an endearing homey touch...besides, with important demands on my time like researching the cost of plasticine in Burundi, who has time for housework?

Second idea might have merit...

Freimaya, Barbara and Rufus

The attic is already filled to the rafters, with much of what can only be described as 'landfill starter kit.'

I can't believe no other Fodorites suffer from this syndrome. Wait, I haven't had a chance to peruse anyone's hard drives.....what's this I see on your drive, Barbara, 40 gigabytes and counting on 'travel links...&quot;

:))

Is it worth trying the line that keeping travel memorabilia will inspire you to get him that perfect pair of cashmere trousers from Italy..?

I don't keep old clothes, but I certainly keep things like pamphlets, ticket stubs, notes, etc, anything that will help me conjure up a memory someday! Guilty as charged of being a pack rat. I was going through my box of stuff the other day looking for something, and discovered (for example) a travel pack of Kleenex that I distinctly remember purchasing in a Sorrento store ten years ago and kept the rest of the packet because I liked the fact it was all written in Italian! (I was rather young at the time) It's 'just' a Kleenex packet but it conjures up a day in my memory, and that makes it worth keeping.

I scrapbooked a German candywrapper from our first trip 9 years ago!

I have culled out brochures etc from my two rolly-bins (a drawer for each country and a large one for just Paris) and given away older books from the shelves. Gotta make room for the new stuff.

I guess I'm hopeless too. Still have all the brochures, matchbooks etc. brought back from a 1971 trip to Rome and Athens! Sitting on the hutch on my computer desk is an empty Orangina bottle from Paris in September. For a short while after returning I could uncap it, smell the orangy aroma and pretend I was back there again. And what about the straw from McD's on the Champs Elysses....

Love the answers guys!
Though I have never actually thought of it as a &quot;cult&quot;, I do love to scrapbook my trips, and add in lots of odds and ends, from brochures and such. So, whatever is left after the scrapbook is done usually falls into one of 2 categories- (1) wasn't that important if it didn't make it into the scrapbook; (2) was something we wanted to do but did not get the opportunity, and I put in a little country file of brochures and articles about places I would like to check out. Every couple of years that gets purged as well.

Books are another issue. Very bad about getting rid of books.

Hahaha, this is a funny thread. We should start a new one called &quot;Weirdest Thing You've Ever Kept as a Souvenir.&quot;
In addition to the Italian Kleenex packet, I do also have a (doubtless petrified) packet of sugar cubes from the Musee d'Orsay (which I kept because it says Musee d'Orsay on it). THAT conjures up the memory of the first time I went to that museum 10 yrs ago and decided Van Gogh was not just an artist I liked, but My Man. :-)
Three cheers for pack rats!

PatrickLondon

cashmere trousers? Look, spouse is an engineer. He makes the comic strip character 'Dilbert' look like a cutting edge male fashion model on a Milan runway.

Deja vu - aha! Another person who keeps ordinary household objects and minor purchases simply because they are labelled in a foreign language.

On my windowsill a plant is kept watered by a tube that comes from a bottle of water I originally bought in Austria (the bottle I mean, the water has been replaced many times.) Plant just has a more exotic look, being watered by what is supposedly 'Naturliches Mineralwasser - mit Kohlensaure versetzt'. (don't ask me what that last part means, for all I know I drank water laced with anthrax, which might explain a lot....)

Travelnut - I can do you one better. I kept the candy (a hard one) into the bargain. Until the candy finally melted and rehardened so many times, it ruined the wrapper. Then I could throw it out.

Cat Fancier - lemme guess, and hands up all the rest of you, confess: how many miniature shampoo bottles/soaps from various hotels are cluttering up your medecine cabinet? What were your favourites? Did you ever actually USE them?

Jonesie - friend whose nickname matches your screen handle has a private library of in excess of 2000 volumes. They line the halls, are stacked up in piles in one of the bedrooms...

I'm worried his house is going to collapse from the weight...

I took me forever to get my husband to give up his flat front flood-water pants from the seventies (when pleats had been in for 10 year) and he stills chides me that if he'd kept them longer, they would be back in style.

Hey, if these things didn't make it into your journal, your scrapbook, or your photo album - GET RID OF THEM. If it's for information only, the info is old, you didn't go there and it doesn't serve as a memory jogger, GET RID OF IT. If it has any sentimental value, put it in the scrapbook/journal/album.

You will suffer the recriminations of removing/destroying those pants forever, but sometimes you have to put those things out of their misery - be strong, somebody's got to do it and you are doing it for his own good......

I, unfortunately, hold onto those old books and such that don't make it into my albums for far too long. However, living in So Cal, we are not afforded the luxary of either basement or useable attic so either the books go or other items go. It ends up that books go. After all, I'm usually planning the next trip anyway and have lost interest in the old stuff.

As to the polyester? Maybe you could tie it into knots and use them as a some sort of dog toy? That is, if the dog would have them....

Jonsie &amp; Sue-
when I moved I sent 35 boxes of books (at 50 pounds apiece) ahead of me, which are still in my attic because there's no room for them in any other room. I have over 800 cookbooks, not to mention many additional biographies, fiction, history, and of course Travel books. 2000 books? ...A mere drop in the bucket. It's truly FRIGHTENING.
((S))((*))

merrittm

flat front floodwater? I love the alliteration, but I can't picture the pants. Did they have cuffs (hence the term, floodwater?)

Maybe it's superstition, not sentimentality. For example, we still have our copy of Fodor's Hawaii from 1997. If we get rid of it, we'll never get back there, owing to some publisher's curse....

Chele - wonderful idea, making the dog an accomplice to the crime. Except it never worked with my teachers and homework, though...

kamahinaohoku

800 --- <i> eight hundred </i> cookbooks??!! To you, with failing hands, I throw the pack rat torch....

My friend's library is largely on military history (his area of research.) Maybe the two of you could get together and write recipes with a historical theme.

Lezzee: Napoleon's Moscow Retreats: no-bake chocolate dessert squares, designed to be chilled in the fridge (or outdoors in a Russian winter, whichever is handy)...

Churchill's Chicken soup (some chicken, some neck....)

Patton's Boxing Day Turkey Souffle (The turkey, if not the general, will return....)

anyone else have any contributions to make?

I'm the shedder; my husband is the packrat. As for my travel stuff, I purge before I get on the plane to go home (if I haven't already shedded stuff at intermediate stages along the way). That includes guidebooks, novels, the old undies I saved up to wear on the trip and throw out, half-used personal care products (if they're liable to get sticky in my bag), you name it. I just keep photos.

My husband has been collecting sugar packets, among other things, from various trips for decades. Most are tidily organised in special binders, but there are a couple of boxes, too. While supervising our move to Paris a few months ago, I was secretly pleased to hear one of the movers advise my husband (without prompting from me), &quot;Sorry, sir, we're not transporting large quantities of white powder.&quot; (The collection has gone into storage at his mother's house.)

Unfortunately, his Egyptian woven bag collection successfully crossed the Atlantic. Somehow our movers unpacked several never-touched boxes in our basement known as my husband's &quot;gift boxes&quot; (accumulated stuff to give to others) and redistributed the contents across a number of other boxes. Every time I went to unpack something in our new apartment (and we moved 240 boxes and other items), I seemed to uncover a couple of cheap Egyptian bags, which Mr. W had accumulated during various trips to markets during the time he lived in Egypt. I guess you can't escape a market without buying something.

Then, of course, there was the large bag of suspicious but very tired looking dried leaves/weeds I unpacked on the day Mr. W first moved into my apartment. They were in his &quot;absolute essentials; can't live without this stuff until the rest of my shipment arrives boxes&quot; - although they had been in temporary storage already for 6 months when the box was unpacked. Egyptian tea, apparently, acquired 15 years ago.

The Egyptian tea was accompanied by a number of other food items, including a half-empty bag of pistachio nuts. When I asked him he packed this stuff, he said &quot;Well, they're perishables.&quot; Gee, I thought the point of perishables is that they perish, so they should be thrown out before you move or put your boxes in storage for an indefinite period.

We won't even talk about his 20-year collection of every bill he's ever received.

On the plus side, he's now in charge of keeping track of and paying the bills, since I have a bad habit of throwing them out.

Not that it will work on the polyester pants (unless he wears them regularly), but the following tip could work for other stuff. I had a friend who moved in with her boyfriend and was somewhat less than enthusiastic about some of the things visible in the house. She had a housewarming and added to her female friends' invitations &quot;special prizes for spilling things on boyfriend's stuff&quot;.

Take the polyester and any other &quot;vintage&quot; (?) items and put them on eaby. Plead your case in the auction description and sell the stuff! You'll have enough $ to take a trip where your husband can collect more stuff (or at least you'll have enough $ for cup of coffee on the trip).