Do you keep old Calendars/Diaries?

I kept a diary till I was 17. Then my Mum found my diary and read it. It was full of stuff we teenagers got up to including lying to our parents and sleeping on the beach. Mum threw it at me even though there was nothing really terrible in it. I haven’t kept one since.

I know that feeeling trying to de-clutter! I've kept our family wall calendars for over a decade. Some were custom made ones with photos that are nice to see - also it's a reminder of all the things going on that year. But they are just stuffed in a cupboard so I keep them more for sentiment. I don't really use a diary any more. I use my phone for reminders and appointments and occasional diary entries, I email to myself! Although I have to say that proper diaries are better for looking back to find a date something happened. The phone doesn't seem to keep things forever.

Looking back @appts/bdays/ funerals is a visceral experience.. ranging from highs to lows … didn’t realise I shared so much on paper / diaries .. even on calendars when I put unhappy emojis which were not even a thing in 60/70s

I kept a diary from thirteen to when I married at twenty four. I still have some of those.
I started again when I was about fifty and write every night about what’s happened, the weather, my thoughts. There’s nothing very private.
My mother left her diaries from the early years of the war. They are fascinating records of what was happening in the world and in her own life up to her marriage.

I am doing same thing...Got rid of them all now!

I keep all my diaries and calendars. I have my mother's old diaries too. My friend said I should read them but I can't bear to. It seems intrusive even though she passed away more than 20 years ago.

For a few years I kept daily diaries but when I read through them they were rather boring and repetitive. I now have a little notebook that I fill with funny things that my Grandchildren say as well as other stuff that raises a smile. It's good for me to look back on and I hope one day it will be good for my own kids too.

I kept diaries when I was a teenager. A boyfriend read them. I was so annoyed I threw them all on the fire. I wish I had them now.

I started to keep a House diary when DH was diagnosed with cancer 14 years ago, just as we'd retired. Initially to keep track of all appointments etc. I've kept one ever since and they've been invaluable for checking dates for all sorts of things. It's on the coffee table and everything goes in it. Old ones are kept in a box upstairs and are useful for looking back, especially at medical issues, dates due etc. DH keeps stuff on his phone but I need to see things written down.

Chucked out so many letters, cards, school pictures a while ago. Loved looking them all again, but just decided they are in the past. Move on. Kept a very few. Same with clothes.

I keep well photographed scenes on calendars to copy if I feel like doing a painting .

Don't do diaries.
But do keep the previous years Calendar for reference dates for bills, appointments etc.

Always handy

Also tend to buy Artists Calendars and sometimes cut out a painting etc from last year and put on the wall in the hallway in my flat.

Love Andy Warhol, Brigit Riley, Hockney etc.
😻🌻👍

I have kept a diary all my life. When I was a teenager I destroyed them before my parents could read them, when I was older and living with a partner I stopped writing because I knew he looked at them. When I was single again I started writing again and now have 50 years of diaries covering deaths, births, family traumas, work situations, romantic liaisons and my cancer experience. They are invaluable if someone in the family wants to know when we did something. I love looking at them every now and then. But I am sure when I die my son will just bin them.

I have kept my pocket diaries from 1963 to date, with two early one-year gaps and a ten-year void from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties, when presumably I relied on larger ones. But they contain no more than notes of events; some of the names of people I had appointments with are now a mystery to me. Dates and places of holidays I have transferred to a spreadsheet.

I have a separate chunky black notebook in which I recorded early solo trips abroad by myself as a teenager and in my early twenties. This does record some feelings arising from personal relations, and from a few external events, e.g. Paris in May 68.

I keep work diaries and also started a diary when my twin grandaughters were born, that was 16 years ago. I don’t write every day but record special memories, holidays Christmas, birthdays etc .

I am now 80 and have kept diaries since I was about 9 years old. Some have very little that would be of interest to anyone else, but reading just an odd sentence I can be transported to that particular time. I have quite a good memory and not just what was happening , but often sense of smell of something or the lovely little flower buttons on my sisters blue dress etc etc.

When I lived abroad and in particular in two y ears living in Portugal I wrote to my family the whole time. Not a set amount each week, but when I had the time, and once after a particularly busy time , when I was singing in concerts and making classic recordings etc etc wrote 24 foolscap pages home. I used to put all the things that we were doing and also what was happening in things like fiestas etc etc and a careful comment or two on the political situation (Salazar was the dictator then) My mother kept them all and then eventually they were passed to a library with the information as to what I was doing there etc and now it is not the information about what we were doing, but rather the information and knowledge about the life in the country , at that time, that is of interest. I also lived in Damascus for a while, and travelled a great deal, So it takes very little to connect with all these years, and what was happening. You cannot get them back once they have gone, and whilst the internet has its uses, no one knows what may happen in the future. We have seen information lost through malicious intention and also by mistakes. Written information, so long as it is not tampered with and left in its old form is there for many reasons. People in your family may be glad of the information when trying to trace family, or be pleased to see that you also enjoyed a particualr hobby or interest. To me they are truly valuable and I would not destroy them at all. Birthday and christmas cards are not so important, but things like the calendars , I dont know since covid , but we used to give good pictures from a calendar to a play group. They can be cut up into large pieces and show the children how a jigsaw works, or they can cut them out and stick them in a scrap book.I always found they enjoyed having the pictures to do as they liked with them.

For long time information on an earlier time , if someone has lived there can give historians lots of little clues, and I also get people to write on the back of photos what the photo is and also when it was taken. Good job we are not all the same and I think the fact that I can pick a diary out and read a couple of sentences and be taken right back to that time is probably why I keep them.

Redcar

I started to keep a diary during the first lockdown but have given up now. I still have the diaries from 2020 though and can’t bring myself to get rid of them. I have also kept the Orders Of Service from funerals for the last 10-12 years,but had a cull of them yesterday and have only kept those for close family and friends. Do other people keep these?

Yes I keep the Orders Of Service from all the funerals I attend.
They are treasured keepsakes.

My father kept a diary from about 8 yrs old and for following 85 yrs. There are a few years missing from 1930's. He lived thru WW2 in London so many interesting details of daily life. I have heard that Bishopsgate Institute in London would be interested in adding to their archives. It is possible to put a time limit on when they might be read by general public.

I used to keep a diary from my late teens for about 20 years. A boyfriend of mine emigrated to Canada 60 years ago. He and his wife and my husband and I have visited each other and these days keep in regular touch by email. Several times he's asked me what happened in certain years in the early 60s when we were together and I get great fun reading back through my diaries to find out what he wants to know, but also reminding myself of my life at that time.

Some of you may remember I misplaced a ring some months ago, well it happened again to the same ring, so whilst on my search I have decluttered so much. Clothes that I have not worn in years went to charity, papers from when my mum was in care, seven years have passed so they can go, I have a large box of her cards dating back to her 'courting' days, something else for me to do. She also wrote a diary to my dad who died 20 years ago. It did not make nice reading as she was quite detrimental to me!. I have diaries from before the pandemic when I was diagnosed with my horrible illness, it reminds me that I am now so much fitter and have come a long way. I also have a box of old papers from my first house purchase, payslips from various jobs, papers from my divorce and acquisition of my house. So much stuff. So very therapeutic and I am plodding on. Still havent found my ring, which is a mystery but probably my own fault.

I've a couple of my diaries from 1966 an 1967. Reading them now is a very interesting stroll through how time's have changed...eg: 24th December 1966 "A and me met at Maccies" (coffee bar) this morning to go Christmas shopping, all the gang were there. I bought some white plimsoles".

I have a Lord of the Rings calendar from years ago. Don't know if it's worth anything. I have birds, which love to peck at things. So I keep my calendars and hang them where the birds can reach them. They love tearing the paper to bits. Makes a lot of mess but keeps them occupied.

I think that if my children found my diaries, which were written during an absolutely terrible time in my marriage. They would be shocked!
They think the sun- shines out of my husband's bottom!
During this period, he was taking a 'woman' up to the forest, as "Her old dog couldn't walk that far anymore"!
This went for many, many months apparently. Untill I found- out about it purely by chance!
If my children did find my diarys,
I hope they would stop putting the big-headed git on a pedestal!

FriedGreenTomatoes2

I’ve got proper ‘dear diary’ entries for 38 years. They’re all in a box in the wardrobe. I never read them. Not sure what to do with them now. I stopped writing them 2 years ago. Family illness, worry and busyness put me off. Still. I need to think about that box.

Give them to a local historical society or to a library with the proviso that they are first to be made public in fifty years or so.

They may well be useful to future historians, but you need to protect living relatives of the people you may have mentioned, or erase names before handing them over.

Please,please keep them. Sorry to sound so pedantic but they are important milestones in the history of your family. So much is on digital media that these important words and pictures will be lost. Where would we be without Samuel Pepys diaries? Not just recording huge events but everyday life that people forget.