I Am Begging You to Stop Throwing These Away (Before It Is Too Late)

Get The Old Mexican Way, every old way written down: https://oldmexicanway.com There is a black trash bag by your front door, tied at the top. You filled it on Sunday, after a nice young woman in a white room told you she was begging you to get rid of your stuff. And every time you walk past it, something in your chest says wait. Keeping things is not a sickness. Your mother kept things because she knew exactly what each one cost to replace, and which ones could not be replaced at all. That is not clutter. That is knowledge. The honest balance: the junk can go, and I said so in the video about what leaves the house after fifty. This video is about the things that never should have been in the bag. Even one of the women who makes the declutter videos has said it: the people who throw it all away are the people who can afford to buy it all again. THE TWELVE (every one of them something the declutter videos tell you to toss): 1️⃣ The glass jars. The aristocracy of the táper world. Every jar is a lid you already own. 2️⃣ The towels and sheets that wore thin. Rags, patches, the ironing board cover, the drop cloth, the dog bed. 3️⃣ The button tin, the cookie tin with never a cookie in it. A repair shop that fits in one hand. 4️⃣ The good scissors, the ones nobody is allowed to touch. Throw away five pairs if you want. Never the hidden one. 5️⃣ The wooden spoon and the black pan. A seasoned pan cannot be bought. Keep the one, not eleven. 6️⃣ The old hand tools. You do not have to know how to use every tool. You only have to still own it on the day you learn. 7️⃣ The wool blanket. Warm even when wet. You keep it for the one night that is not normal. 8️⃣ The things that need no plug: the hand can opener, the flashlight, the candles, the battery radio. Have the light before you need it. 9️⃣ The recipe cards in her handwriting. Take the picture, and keep the box. A picture of her handwriting is a picture. The card is her hand. 🔟 The printed photographs. Scan them, and keep the paper, and write the names on the back in pencil while someone is alive who knows them. 1️⃣1️⃣ One real Sunday dress that fits you now, for the worst day, so the worst day has one less thing in it. 1️⃣2️⃣ Not an object: the story that goes with each thing. Write it on masking tape under the bowl. You tell it once, the paper tells it forever. Before it is too late means two things: before you pay forty dollars to buy back a pan you owned, and before the last person who knew the story is gone. Who profits: the bins and the matching glass containers, then the store again when you buy back what you tossed, then the storage unit. Empty, fill, empty, fill, and every cycle has a refill. Tonight, do one: untie the bag. Take out three things. For each, say out loud what it costs to buy again and who taught you to use it. If you cannot answer either, it can go. If you can answer both, it goes back in the drawer. Tell me the one thing you almost threw away and are glad you kept, and your county or state. I read every one.