I just spent two days searching for four photos I remember from college days for an oral history project. Finally gave up after a dozen or so albums, a half-dozen large plastic bins in my office closet, and one box in the garage. Found two, but not the other two. Still had another 20 or so boxes in the garage that haven't been touched since I moved into this house 20 years ago, but most of those were baseball memorabilia so I stopped there.
I keep telling my sons they are going to have a great time disposing of all this detritus from my life -- and some stretching back as far as my great-grandparents -- because of my hoarding ways. And my youngest son says, "you are not a hoarder. You should see whet we had to go through when my in-laws died. Stuff in walls as well as the rafters; storage sheds; one unit in their rental property devoted to storage."
But to answer your question, those two days were an amazing journey through 8+ decades from being a bed-ridden kid without electricity or indoor plumbing wondering what the rest of the world was like, to having trod a lot of it and done far more than ever expected. Added to the appreciation of what a great ride it has been. And, no, none of it was tossed or given away.
