Why I shredded 38 years-worth of old journals

It felt amazing.

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Hi friends,

I received a blank journal as a high school graduation gift — a small, lined book with My Favorite Memories embossed in flowery script on a puffy, mauve cover.

So began my near-daily journaling habit. Nothing involved or precious, just a stream-of-consciousness dump of whatever was in my head. I recorded events, vented about problems, brainstormed, and mused about my career, my romantic life, the universe, and other charged topics.

My journals became a travel log and map of my next frontier: adulthood.

Over the years, I filled a lot of pages.

As part of my ongoing death cleaning, I collected all my old journals and spent a couple hours paging through the motley pile of spiral-bound notebooks, fancy hardcovers, and conference freebies. It was like a guided tour of my life. Events I’d forgotten about bubbled back to the surface. Future dreams are now old memories (“someday, when I become a parent…”). It was wild.

It was also sobering. Problems I wrestled with 20 years ago still trip me up today. Same shit, different decade. 😳 🤷🏽‍♀️

Those old journals were intensely private. They were not a writer’s august notes destined for a university archive, nor were they valuable family history. They were the scribbled residue of a person who processed her thoughts on paper.

That’s when I realized the journals needed to go.

It felt a shame to destroy them, but they were never meant to be read by anyone other than me.

But how would I dispose of them? There were at least 30 books. Recycling was out (no privacy) and so was a bonfire (toxic, dangerous, overdramatic). I couldn’t put entire books through our shredder.

I was out of time, so I shoved the journals into an old backpack and sealed it with packing tape onto which I wrote in big Sharpie letters:

PRIVATE. IN CASE OF DEATH, PLEASE DISCARD WITHOUT READING.

It wasn’t a perfect solution (to say the least), but I wasn’t sure what else to do. I threw the backpack toward the back of our attic storage closet.

For weeks, that backpack haunted me. What if Rael or the kids found it? What if I got hit by a bus and that stern Sharpie message contained my final words to my family?

I may have an overactive imagination, but still. Yikes.

The answer eventually dawned on me: an industrial shredding service. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? I’d used a bulk shredder when I cleared out my parents’ house in preparation for Mom’s move to Portland.

I Googled “bulk shredding Portland” and found a local company not far from my house. It took all of 20 minutes to rip the pages from their covers. I boxed them up and drove directly to the shredder. For a few minutes and eleven bucks, I watched as 38 years-worth of ruminating was transformed into recyclable ribbons of paper. The owner of the company was kind enough to finish the job for me right then and there.

The relief was immediate.

Destroying old journals isn’t right for everyone, but it was for me. It was more than knowing those old thoughts and memories would forever remain private. I got to ritually step away from a lifelong habit of worrying at problems rather than solving them. Or when there’s no solution, accepting the situation and moving on.

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What I've learned about death cleaning (so far)

This old house

Notes of note

Some notes contain affiliate links. Here’s my affiliate policy.

• The phrase “death cleaning” comes from the book The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margaretha Magnusson. More at Amazon or Bookshop.org.

• Please send my Mom some good energy. It’s been a difficult few weeks for her.

• My intention to post weekly-ish here just isn’t meshing with the rhythm of my post-pandemic writing and reading. The Internet feels fuller and faster than ever, and I crave more time in the world outside my head. So for now new posts will be inspired by topics rather than timing. It took a while to feel okay about this (internal scolding was involved) but it feels like the right move. I hope a more “bloggy” approach to this newsletter suits your crowded inboxes and schedules. Comments welcome.