Erin Doland of Unclutterer had an interesting post raising the question about whether people preserve for posterity or are hoarding. Where does scrapbooking fit into this? I like to believe I am scrapbooking for posterity and am not hoarding, but where is the line? This summer I tossed nearly all of my photographs (probably 2,000 photographs) that I had decided were not scrapworthy. I literally put them in the trashcan. I resist hoarding but there is always that little voice in the back of my head telling me “you might need that some day.” Yeah, I might, but most likely I won’t. How do you draw the line to prevent hoarding? This kind of boils down to how do you decide if something is scrapworthy or trashworthy?
Stephanie Medley-Rath is a sociologist and scrapbooker who studies scrapbooking and memory keeping. Scrapworthy Lives is a blog focused on her sociological analysis of scrapbooking, with a sprinkling of posts about Stephanie's own scrapbooking projects.
