How Much Junk do you Keep?

Nurses General Nursing

Published

A question for non-hoarders please :)

I've been sorting through stuff and reevaluating my relationship to things this year. I've gotten rid of a lot of stuff. Right now I'm going through a lot of old nursing training handouts, powerpoints and stuff from the last decade, some old stuff from school, other training I've had or continuing education. Some of it is obviously recycling, some is still good information.

I think I'm going to slowly read through the stuff that I've forgotten as a refresher for the next month or so, then probably ditch most of it. Perhaps certain information will point me towards things I absolutely should know and am rusty with now.

So it made me wonder about how much stuff other people keep.

-What do you keep?

-How do you keep yourselves current on information you don't use very often in your practice?

-Do you even bother?

-Are there other areas of nursing you're interested with and don't practice, but maybe like to keep more current?

A question for non-hoarders please :)

I've been sorting through stuff and reevaluating my relationship to things this year. I've gotten rid of a lot of stuff. Right now I'm going through a lot of old nursing training handouts, powerpoints and stuff from the last decade, some old stuff from school, other training I've had or continuing education. Some of it is obviously recycling, some is still good information.

I think I'm going to slowly read through the stuff that I've forgotten as a refresher for the next month or so, then probably ditch most of it. Perhaps certain information will point me towards things I absolutely should know and am rusty with now.

So it made me wonder about how much stuff other people keep.

-What do you keep?

-How do you keep yourselves current on information you don't use very often in your practice?

-Do you even bother?

-Are there other areas of nursing you're interested with and don't practice, but maybe like to keep more current?

None. I am the anti-hoarder. I get rid of everything except my pets and my people, often impulsively.

I've never been the type to print out powerpoints and I trash my books by tearing out the pages I need. I always hated carrying around the whole books.

Specializes in Pedi.

I don't keep any of that kind of crap. Most of those handouts I leave on the table when I leave the training. If not, they go right in the recycling.

I read medscape articles to keep current on topics that interest me.

Specializes in EMS, ED, Trauma, CEN, CPEN, TCRN.

Let it gooooooooo! I have hired a residential dumpster twice in the last year. It is liberating! When I was deployed I only owned what I could carry. Now I am not ever thinking that I will get to that level of austerity again in my life, but it taught me a lot about what was important.

Specializes in Med-Surg, Geriatrics, Wound Care.

I keep piles of crap. Many old textbooks. I have textbooks from the 90s. Do I ever look at them? No. I use Dr. Google. I have gotten rid of the printouts for many classes.. I'm generally too lazy to declutter. I have a 5ish bedroom house with just my husband. So, plenty of room for me to store my junk..

The only thing I keep are my CEU certificates and as soon as I get a new computer I'll scan them in and get rid of those too.

I keep piles of crap. Many old textbooks. I have textbooks from the 90s. Do I ever look at them? No. I use Dr. Google. I have gotten rid of the printouts for many classes.. I'm generally too lazy to declutter. I have a 5ish bedroom house with just my husband. So, plenty of room for me to store my junk..

Just reading this makes me want to start throwing things away. I'm seriously looking around my room right now.

I keep piles of crap. Many old textbooks. I have textbooks from the 90s. Do I ever look at them? No. I use Dr. Google. I have gotten rid of the printouts for many classes.. I'm generally too lazy to declutter. I have a 5ish bedroom house with just my husband. So, plenty of room for me to store my junk..

Might want to rethink your strategy if you have children or other family that will have to go through your stuff someday. I've had to do this for a few relatives. One house we had paperwork professionally shredded- 900 pounds of it!

Specializes in Med-Surg, Geriatrics, Wound Care.
Might want to rethink your strategy if you have children or other family that will have to go through your stuff someday. I've had to do this for a few relatives. One house we had paperwork professionally shredded- 900 pounds of it!

No kids. But, chances are we'll move after we retire. But that's like 15-20 years away. My hubby is reasonable at sneaking behind me and tossing junk. I try really hard not to go behind him and grab that "portable soup mug with spoon" (that I'll never use because I drink soup like 2x/yr). I did toss some of my nursing stuff. But, haven't done a full purge.. And, some part of me insists I'll go back and learn physics and organic chemistry... :D

Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.

I still have textbooks from nursing school back in the '90s. I thought I'd gotten rid of them in the last move, when we went from a four-bedroom three-bath house to a room in our son's home. But I ran across them again a few months ago when I was going through some of the stuff in my storage unit...don't know yet what I'm going to do with them, but they're so obsolete it's not even funny.

Specializes in Surgical, quality,management.

Most of my nursing related junk was at my father's in Ireland. I was back in July and he had pulled it all down from the loft as he had it reinsulated.

I was given the task of going through it all plus all my mother's stuff and she was a hoarder who kept shoving stuff in the loft that was never dealt with and a she is 18yrs dead.

I chucked 95% of it - old floppies with first year assignments on it, hard copies of notes, mum's tax returns from when she had a business in the early 90s in England, old broken handbags. What I kept was very little 2 textbooks that are already out of date from the early 2000s, my original registration certificate with NMBI, a reference of mum's from when she worked in Manhattan in the late 70s which was so sexist and deeming reading it in 2018.

My place in Australia has never been a hording site, I purge inservices maybe taking the one page that is useful and keeping it, I use an app for my CPD, I have regular electronic purges as well. My only hoarding tendencies are clothes and shoes as I am 6ft tall and a size 11 shoe so it can be difficult to find things that fit properly.

Specializes in Pediatric Critical Care.

If its from the last decade, much of the information in it is likely obsolete and you will do better with keeping current by reviewing more current sources.

Take it from the hypocrite who has a bookshelf full of nursing text books dating as far back as the late 90s.

+ Add a Comment