On storage

My wedding photos sit in the back of a closet, collecting dust and eating up precious storage space.

What are you supposed to do with those items, things intended to be cherished memories but instead reminders of a life, and two people, that no longer exist?

Do you ceremonially, and stereotypically, burn them? I feel like that implies too much of an emotional investment. I'm not angry with them. I don't hate them - or him, for that matter.  I just don't have room for them in my life anymore. They're extra baggage in my ever-expanding universe.

Friends suggest keeping them, whether as a reminder, a warning, or out of simple sentimentality.  Out of habit, inherited from my mother, I've always kept all photos, from the blurry and unidentifiable to the unflattering and shots of people long gone from my life.

These photos, like the other trappings of that life, kind of feel like they belong to another person. As though I'm storing them for a friend who will, someday, take them off my hands and free up that space again for shoe, book or wine storage.

But no one is going to come pick them up. So do I move them to long term storage, shove them further into the back of the closet, in case I someday feel an attachment to them or a need to remember, or send them simply down the garbage chute?