Sentimental Curation Decisions Under Time Pressure
There's a box in my closet I've moved four times. Inside: a cracked iPhone 4, a movie ticket from 2011, a birthday card with a coffee stain. I don't open it often—maybe once a year, when I'm feeling retrospective. But it's there, taking up space, reminding me of a version of myself I'm not sure I want to keep. That box feels like the old way of doing things. We used to hoard—keeping everything because throwing it away felt like erasing a part of our lives. But something's different now. People are starting to ask a sharper question: not 'does this spark a memory?' but 'does this help me be who I want to be?' That's the shift from memory hoarding to identity editing. It's not about minimalism or getting rid of everything. It's about choosing which memories get to shape your present.