Have you ever Marie Kondo'd yourself a little bit too hard?
It's kind of something I'm notorious for. Most of my family has a bit of a hoarding habit, so I guess you could say my version of rebellion is the fact that I keep virtually nothing. I don't typically attach sentimental value to things, so throwing them away or donating them comes easily.
If it doesn't spark joy in that moment, it's out.
That doesn't mean there haven't been a few times I've totally regretted my extreme-Kondo habits. I'm looking at you, original Fashion Star Fillies from the 80's. Never has a plastic pony been more full of elegaaaanza.
Reddit user abstimax wanted to know what sorts of things people had gotten rid of but wish they had kept. Not gonna lie, most people's reasonings for wishing they had kept things went well beyond objective fabulousness.
That doesn't mean the things they regret getting rid of were any less interesting, though. Check out some of these responses.
Dear Diary, NOPE!
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My old diaries. Was too scared my parents would go through my room and discover it when I was away at camp. So much regret, because it would have been so interesting to look back and read about how younger me thought and viewed life, and the things that I deemed important to me back then.
I kept my old diaries, but moved around a lot on my 20s and left them at my parents house. When the time came to clean out my stuff (I was in my mid-30s), I went through them again, thinking it would be pretty cool to revisit 14 year old me. I cringed so hard I ended up throwing them out.
10+ Years Of Art
My old harddrive that I accidentally wiped the entire partition that had like 10+ years of my artwork saved on it.
Wardrobe Whoopsies
Lost a bunch of weight (30lbs). Threw out all my fat clothes because "I'll never let myself get like that again!"
Life happened, lots of stress happened, gained the weight back. Had to buy all new fat clothes.
3 years later, lost all the weight again. Did I learn from my mistake last time and keep my fat clothes? NOPE. Threw them out as incentive because THIS time, THIS time, I would DEFINITELY not gain it back. I was scared that if I kept the fat clothes, I would somehow be less motivated to keep the weight off.
Moved away, had to change jobs from very active to sedentary job, stupidly didn't adjust my diet to compensate. Gained most of the weight back.
Going to lose the weight again but this time I will keep my damn clothes.
- elf-y
Never Forgiven Myself
I was given a $45,000 trust fund when I turned 18 (my mother passed away when I was 4 and her assets were sold, with funds being divided between my siblings and I in a locked GIC until we were 18). I spent it in 1 yr on booze and gifts for boyfriends........have never forgiven myself.
The Book
The first girl I ever fell in love with wrote me a book. An entire book. It was about her early childhood and all this stuff she went through. We broke up because I left high school before she did, and we grew apart. We eventually became friends again, and she asked me for it back years later when she was going through therapy and wanted to see what she'd written when she was younger.
I threw the book away in a dumpster, along with my high school yearbooks and some other stuff that reminded me of her. I lied and said I lost it because I didn't want her to think she ever meant so little to me.
I still feel guilty that I let my emotions get the better of me. I saw a Gilmore Girls episode once where the mom has a box for stuff her daughter wants to throw away, but she makes her wait a year before really doing it. I should've had that box.
When Mom Cleaned
When I was in the 5th grade, my mom started to raise a huge stink about the state of my bedroom. As a kid, through a combination of generous aunts and uncles, good grades, and plain ol' begging, I'd amassed a collection of stuff: SNES and Genesis games (yes, my SNES and Genesis ran fine), Batman: The Animated Series, X-Men, and Spider-Man: The Animater series action figures, LEGO sets, Micro Machines, Mighty Max playsets, GI Joes, gaming magazines, and posters. She wanted me to get rid of all that stuff because I was in the 5th grade now and should be more "grown up". I actively resisted.
And then I made the mistake of going out of town. I went on an out of town camping trip with some cousins for a weekend. I cam back, and my room was basically empty. Just clothes and books and bare walls and empty shelves. Mom said she "had my room cleaned", and to this day (I'm 31 now), I still harbor a deep resentment over that.
Charger Needed
I have an old Motorola mobile phone that I must have thrown out the charger etc. for ages ago. It has a video of my younger brother throwing the funniest temper tantrum while trying to put his already-tied shoes on & refusing to stop & untie the laces first. I swear one day I will embarrass the hell out of him with the video & for that reason, I still have the phone at home just in case one day I manage to boot it up again...one day.
- itsBoof
I Already Owned That
When I got divorced my main concern was getting out as quickly as I could for safety reasons. So when I first moved out I loaded everything I couldn't live without into my car; like my pets, my clothes, important documents, favorite books, and irreplaceable mementos. Everything else didn't really matter to me at that point.
After discussing it with my ex he gave me 1 day to come in and pick up some of my stuff. And he fought me on everything. DVD's, furniture, kitchenware, you name it. I left with less than half of what I owned. I know in the long run it doesn't matter because I made it out with my pets and were all safe now, but its so frustrating to repurchase things that I already own.
Forgetting Mom
My parents divorced when I was eleven and I stayed with my mother and my sister. Afterwards my mother became psychologically abusive and my sister emulated her while also becoming anorexic which made the following seven years everything but what you'd like a childhood to be like. At 18 I decided that I had enough and with the help of my father moved out and to college when they weren't at home.
I only left a letter explaining why I left and blocked them in any way possible. A year later I get a package with a lot of pictures from my childhood from my mother. At the time, I really just wanted to forget about her so I threw out all the pictures that had her in them and gave the rest to my father to keep.
As much as she is a despicable person, I really would like to have kept them. I left in a hurry back then so I didn't take any other childhood pictures with me and regret having destroyed something so unique and personal despite the bad memories. It hurts.
Private Poetry
Half my life ago I was 14 and I got hit by a car. I ended up in a coma and with frontal lobe brain damage. When I finally got home from hospital months later I expressed my feelings and how I was dealing with everything through poetry. But I was very very private about it. So when my mum found them and told me she'd read them and they were great I immediately threw them away. It felt like a violation.
I wish I'd kept them, not even for my sake but they might've helped someone else going through the same thing.
Pictures Of The Ex
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Honestly, pictures of me and my ex after we split.
We met in college 9 years ago and dated for about 1.5 years. We took tons of pictures during that time but we had a messy breakup. 21-year old me decided to delete those pictures without thinking of the consequences.
5 years later, we decided to give it another chance and now I'm married to her.
The Secret Mentor's Journal
I have the worst story ever.
15+ years ago I met a married guy at a conference. Fell head over heels for him in like 5 minutes, but.... married. At the end of the week it turned out he had been randomly assigned me, as his secret mentee. So all week he had been secretly researching and working on the issues I was at the conference to study/improve myself on. He took it really seriously and even got up at like 5am every day to have a couple of hours to research ways to help me. He even kept a journal of tips, thoughts on our conversations, and tons of words of encouragement that I could use in the future. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me. When he gave it to me I almost started bawling. But.... married.
When I got home I absolutely could not walk past where that journal was without thinking of him and going to a really dark place. I was single and I realized I was comparing every guy I met to this person I could never be with, who I had known for a total 5 days. Dumb!! So I threw the journal away. Over the years, every so often some of his words of education/encouragement would come back to me, and I would immediately push them out of my mind.
A couple of years ago we ran into each other by chance. He had just gotten divorced but was definitely still going through a lot and was in no way ready to date. But we got to be really good friends. He even took me and my mom to lunch one day when my mom had just gotten out of the hospital and needed help getting around.
At lunch my mom blabbed "I remember her talking about you after that conference! You're the one who made her that journal!" Dude laughed and pulled out of his breast pocket a friggin handwritten copy of the journal he had made for himself. 15+ years later. They were little notepad-style books, and he said he had kept mine in his inside breast pocket at the conference, so that he could jot down thoughts throughout the day.- Sashanasha
He said "carrying me next to his heart" for those days and getting up early in the morning to write it had made him feel really close to me. He said that since our friendship had resumed and I'd been facing a lot of challenges with my mom's health, he had been *adding to the journal* and said "bring me yours, I'll copy some stuff over."
I started stammering horribly and practically cried when I said "oh I think when I moved it got lost..." and readers: HIS FACE. It was like I murdered his puppy in front of him!
But I didn't know how to say "I couldn't look at it without wishing you would get a divorce and I didn't want to be that kind of person. and I needed to move on to other men without having you as all five faces on my personal Mount Rushmore." I didn't know how to tell him "I threw my heart away that day" or "when we reconnected, I realized that the reason I'm still single is because I never stopped comparing other men to you."
So he assumed I just didn't feel anything but friendship for him, and got all shy and embarrassed. I'm still trying to convince him but so far it hasn't worked. I still don't know if I should tell him or not -- what a weird thing to say to somebody! But man, what I wouldn't give to have that journal back.
The Last Doorbell Video
When my 17 year old son died in 2017, I had video from the ring doorbell the morning he went to school. In it was "Love you, too!" from him when he left for school.
It got deleted after a period of time. Not by me. Damn. I wish I had thought to save it someplace.
But at least I know his last words to me in person were about love. At least I know he died knowing his Mama loved him. He came into this world with those same words and he left with those same words- and that knowledge is comforting.