I know I probably talk too much about getting and staying organized, both in your photography and in your life in general. And it’s easy to say you should keep the good stuff and throw away the junk, but it is much more difficult to decide what really is useful and valuable, and what really is just junk.

One idea I took to heart years ago is the closet hanger trick. Turn all your hung-up clothes around so the hanger is backwards on the rack, mark the date with a sticky note or a grease pencil, then go about your life. When a year has passed, you should give away all the clothes that are still hung on backwards hangers, since you haven’t worn them for a year.

For what it’s worth, I don’t know anyone who has ever actually done this, but it still seems like a decent idea.

When it comes to photography, things are quite a bit clearer for me: if it is broken, throw it away.

On the other hand, there is some psychology in the mix. My grandparents lived through the depression. Grandma Barron saved used staples and dead hearing aid batteries. So I get it.

These issues came into focus again this week when I made my way over to Pauls Valley to help the crew with some clean-out and clean-up at our sister newspaper, the Pauls Valley Democrat. Like The Ada News, the PVD hasn’t had a press in many years, so the portions of the building that housed the press turned into storage space, and unattended storage space tends to become a dumping ground for items that might have been better sent straight to the Dumpster.

My main purpose in helping the clean-out was to gather unattended photographic materials from the film era, and find a safe space to keep them while I sort through them. Doing this always makes me wonder how many millions of photographs are neglected or discarded when their owners move on or pass on.

I found quite a few negatives and prints that go back well into the 1990s, and as I look through them, I might scan them and publish them here so you might help me remember the people and place in them.