How I used Evernote this week to get rid of my yearbooks

As you know from my “Tour my home” post, Nic and I stayed with my parents for part of our AirBnb stint last month. One day I went on a wild tear through their house, purging not only their things, but my own. (Mom still hasn’t called to say anything of importance is missing!) I tackled what seems to be the hardest for all of us: the memorabilia boxes. Here is a photo of what I started with. I don’t have a photo of after, but I cut it in half.

One way I did this was by doing the unthinkable: tossing my yearbooks. I could NOT have done this without Evernote. I created the note in my “Memorabilia" notebook. Not only do I never look through my yearbooks, but having them Evernoted makes the relevant content (school, year, my picture) helpful! I entered them with the latest year on top and can now place my infamous photos to the school year in which they were taken.

Of Evernote’s countless benefits, its ability to aide in the letting go of hard copy memorabilia is one of my favorite features.

Yearbooks are some of the weightiest and seldom-visited pieces of memorabilia we have. This of course is not the case for everyone. The mere fact that they were banished to my parents’ basement though should be telling enough. Had I not purged them, they would have followed me from home to home, or stayed in my parents’ home until the day that decision was one of many harder ones to make.

I’d be a narcissist to assume you want to see my school photos from 3rd grade through high school (Good Counsel ’97 for you Montgomery county, MD locals!), mullets, braces and all, but I invite you to view the note to see if any yearbook-tossing inspiration awaits you too! Please leave a comment if you’ve ever done the same, or plan to!