Decluttering; a Reflection on the Quiet Passage of Time ~ VCRs, Floppy Disks & Forgotten Binders!

One of my recurring goals from last year was to find contentment by setting my priorities in life. I am not the first one to have this goal, but I wanted to tackle it differently from last years. Instead of running after things that make me happy I tried to have the mindset of not doing and having what make me restless, anxious, overwhelmed. And that is not to say not doing hard work, uncomfortable learning or avoiding any challenges… just the bold decision of decluttering!

While it seems pretty easy writing it but the practicality of it seemed bit more trying than I had originally thought it would pose and it is a work in progress. One thing that I thought would lessen my everyday unnecessary burden was less visual noise around me by having a decluttered space around me – visible and invisible. So I did a serious decluttering of our home, that has been between me, my husband, three boys and a cat for almost 28 years.

Now for those of you who follow my blog or have known me for some time know that  overall my house is not a cluttered mess – besides the predilection I have towards classic charm. While our abode is not a complete minimalistic one, like the friend blogger who recently posted her journey here, we have been living by rules of adding intelligently and consciously.

Side bar for my china hobby: Frequent readers also know of my hobby of collecting vintage china, cutlery and linen. Since closing my vintage rental business, I have decluttered the collection to a great extent. I make a point of using a lot of my china and accouterments regularly so it does not collect dust like it is known to do generally. This year my husband and boys helped by putting in an awesome cabinet storage in our laundry room and I stacked all my fancy storage there. So besides this hobby, which does not contribute to the aforementioned visual noise (at least not yet in my stage of life), I set out the task of decluttering what had not been decluttered before – the boxes  in the cabinets and closets moved with us when we moved.

While many things stirred feelings of nostalgia, memories and evoked feelings that were not expected from this seemingly practical task, two areas that stood out are school supplies and physical media.

A Reluctant Journey into Forgotten Corners

In my life in the US, we have moved several times but more recently, over the past 10 years, we changed homes twice—first from Arizona to Texas in 2016, and then from that rental into our current home in 2017. Like most families, we purged a significant amount of objects during both moves. Yet there were certain items that seemed immune to the decluttering process. These “untouchables” made the journey with us each time, packed up, unpacked, and then tucked away into the upstairs cabinets, always with the vague promise of “sorting them out later.”

These cabinets became home to an eclectic mix: school supplies, old CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, VHS tapes, cassette tapes (remember those?), and of course, photo albums. While the albums held sentimental value, the rest fell under an unwritten rule of “we’ll deal with it someday.” And because these items were neatly hidden behind closed doors, they didn’t interfere with daily life. Out of sight, out of mind. Or so I thought…

The truth is, life got busy. Too busy to sit down and flip through our wedding album, too busy to relive vacations or childhood milestones through old photos and videos. While we managed to share these moments with our older kids at times, our youngest missed out on much of that nostalgia. This realization tugged at my heartstrings and became the catalyst for a long-overdue cleanup.

Of all the places that I decluttered, the most nostalgic wave was brought by the old-school memories. Photos, DVDs, old DVD player, an even VCR/DVD combo, greeting cards, letters between me and my husband, handwritten notes written by kids, old business cards (visiting cards as we used to call them in Pakistan) from my jobs and enterprises. I had been going through other memories like kids’ keepsake etc. pretty regularly so that was pretty fresh in my mind but what hit me most was not knowing what to do with DVDs of my most favorite movie collection! There were beloved collection of classic titles like Pakeeza, Dil To Pagal Hai, Adnan Sami video albums, Indiana Jones’ collection, James Bond and the list goes on… The TDK tapes of custom recorded songs mix-tape of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Chitra Singh, Anup Jalota, songs from all Yash Raj Chopra’s movies… and most of all the video camera (Sony cam recorder that my husband and I bought during our second pregnancy, so we could capture the moments both brothers will have together).

My youngest was given the task of emptying the cabinets so I could sort and store/donate. And he found our wedding picture album, the video camera and somehow charged it and showed to us some of the videos. It took my husband I back to decades. The snippets of videos that he showed us made me so motivated to clear the whole upstairs quickly so we could sit down with the kids and watch the old movies!

While the media and albums brought joy and nostalgia, the school-supply cabinet was a different kind of wake-up call. For years, I had prided myself on keeping it fully stocked—folders, binders, pencil cases, highlighters, separators, you name it – it was like a mini Staples. But this past August marked the first time in 22 years that I didn’t need to shop for back-to-school supplies. With my youngest now in college, the cabinet felt more like a relic of another era than a functional part of our home.

As I sorted through the stacks of unused items, it struck me just how much life had evolved. My boys now rely almost entirely on iPads and cloud-based tools for their work, while my husband and I run my own business digitally, almost completely! The paper-and-pencil days felt like a distant memory. And yet, sifting through that cabinet was an oddly poignant reminder of how time has flown.

As I write this, our upstairs cabinets are lighter, both literally and figuratively. What remains are the items that tell our family’s story—albums, a handful of cherished media, and a pared-down collection of stationery. The rest has found new homes or been responsibly recycled. And while the process was challenging, it was also deeply rewarding.

Decluttering doesn’t mean abandoning the past; it means making thoughtful choices about how to carry it forward. Whether it’s through preserving a wedding album, sharing old videos with loved ones, or simply marveling at how far we’ve come, there’s beauty in the balance between holding on and letting go.

So here’s to decluttering—not as a chore, but as an act of love. Love for the memories we cherish, for the space we reclaim, and for the life we choose to live, moving forward.

This post is deeply inspired by the book The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter by Margareta Magnusson. I honestly can’t recall where I first heard about the book—maybe a podcast or a radio segment—but it intrigued me enough to download it couple of years ago. That’s when the deeper “why” of decluttering really clicked for me. (For those interested, there’s also a TV series based on the book directed and narrated by Amy Poehler). The emotional hurdle of letting go of items—along with the guilt that often comes with discarding things—started to melt away after reading Magnusson’s perspective. The idea that “holding on is wasting money” shifted to a more empowering realization: the true cost of clutter is the peace, space, and mental clarity it takes from you – not to mention an easier cleanup for kids later…And about that: my kids sometimes feel “responsible” for my china collection. I told them very clearly (and my husband as well) not to hold any emotional value to the articles of my affections. I collected the china and accouterments for myself, for my joy as a hobby and to relive a certain way of hospitality. This is not a burden for my kids or spouse to carry and be guilty about donating or giving away after I am gone. The best thing I can do is to make it easy for my survivors to clean up after me!

Want to read about “serious” decluttering – here is the post from the fellow writer, Hunniya~