Declutter "Collections"

In my quest to get rid of all unnecessary items in my house, I found my huge bag of shot glasses in the attic. For years I collected shot glasses because they were an easy thing to buy at souvenir shops when I was on vacation. Then I started getting them at yard sales and stuff just to see how many I could obtain. At one point I think I had around 100. I have slowly gotten rid of some over the years and now I have 55 left. As I set them out to take this picture:


I realized how few of them actually mean something to me. I have two Hard Rock cafe shot glasses to two cities I have never been to (Denver and Chicago). *P.S. Since starting to write this blog I have already sold some of these on Ebay!!* I have some from states I have been to, but I didn't actually buy the shot glass there, like Pennsylvania, Alabama and Virginia. I have several from NC that I got from yard sales. Some were gifts from friends when they traveled, like a couple from Washington DC, Puerto Rico and Jamaica.

Some of them actually do have special meanings for me. I bought one when my mom, sister and I took a girls trip to New York (see Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 here).


This one was from a trip I took with a friend to White Lake.


This one was from a trip I took with a friend and we stopped over in St. Louis:


We've been on vacation to Destin, FL with Stephen's family several times:



This is one I got for Stephen when he got activated to Charleston working on C-17 airplanes:


These are from our honeymoon:


This is from our trip to Disney together:

This is from one of our trips to Gettysburg together (and has now been "handed down" to my dad, a collector of all things historical!)


This one is from one of our anniversary trips to Savannah:



I had some from St. Augustine, and many from different colleges I visited (of course I had the most from ASU!!)

And for all these that really did bring back memories, to be honest, I have pictures from all of those trips. I would much rather have the pictures to look back at, which I do frequently, than have the shot glass. I hadn't even looked at these shot glasses in over two years, which shows how important they were to me. I don't have any remorse in saying goodbye to them, which is another clue that I am ready to discard them.

Now, I did keep some for Stephen to look at and he can decide if he wants to keep them. These include some we received as gifts from family, and these, which you can tell are his:

John Deere, Ruger (a type of gun manufacturer) and two "Redneck" glasses:

If he wants to keep them, that's fine by me. But sometimes you just gotta let go. I was able to "let go" of 44 of my shot glasses. Whew, it feels less cluttered already!!

So what are some of the things you collect? (Besides dust!) Are your collections cluttering up your house? Are they things you shouldn't be collecting? Are they things you could say goodbye to? Let me know!!