I’ve made a drastic decision. I have the playbill for every play I’ve ever seen (except the recent Man of La Mancha playbill which I left at a cafe), precious momentos of the theatre. Well, I say precious, but I can’t remember ever going back to look at any of them. There are playbills all over my room; piled on every surface and scattered across the floor as well. So, I’m going to throw them away. I decided a few days ago. I admit, I haven’t acted on it yet, I had to try the idea on for size, but I really don’t think I’ll miss them. It’s not as though I’ll forget what I’ve see is it? (well, it’s possible. But if it’s really good I’ll remember) All of the information is now available on the internet, which is much easier anyway. Yes, I will shut clutter out, and hopefully, welcome back my sanity. Now, can I bring my self to get rid of my Disney magazines?
On an even happier note, I’ve just had my yearly review at work, and will be the recipient of a modest (very modest) raise. Hey, more money is more money, right? Besides, my boss wrote a lot of nice things about me on my review form, and that was very nice to hear. So things are good. Onward and upward.
Curiosity Killed the Cate 
I applaud your step towards a clutter free life. I always imagine a life free of anything but the bare necessities, and it looks really good in my imagination. But here is what just happened to me to make me think this isn’t going to happen anytime soon. I went through a lot of my clothes, and I have a rule that if I haven’t worn it in the last calendar year then I should get rid of it. And so I was getting rid of a lot of crap, one of those items happened to be a scrubs top. I wear the bottoms frequently enough, but the top, that’s just like your trying to pass yourself off as a doctor or something. Then I got a call from my agent saying that I have an audition for Everwood for an ER doctor and that they want us to dress for the role. Anything that will make us look like doctors. And now I can’t find my scrubs top. I had to borrow one from my brother in law. So even though, I had a top to wear and no harm was done. There’s that part of my brain that is saying “see I told you, we need to have these things around just in case.”
But Playbills, just chuck them. I kept all my stupid programs from everything and put them in my scrapbook and you know what, I never look at them ever. Why would I? So I can remember that Emmelyn was in everything at BYU or that I saw someone famous once in a play and I didn’t realize it.
Hooray for the Raise!!! Congratulations!
Some day I will learn to edit myself. Until then, sorry for the length.
Don’t do it Catherine! Put them nice and organized in a box because you may very well forget what plays you saw, even if they were amazing, and it will be nice to have a reminder somewhere. Or maybe just throw out the ones for plays you didn’t like that much– I know you see more than your average American. I would love to have something like a playbill for all of the plays I saw this summer, but since that is not the way of London, I don’t, and I would really appreciate having at least a list somewhere of everything I saw because almost everything I saw had some merit in it. Perhaps you can tell by my stringed out sentences that this message is urgent!
I also have this small fear within me that some day the whole world will be in turmoil and anarchy and the internet won’t exist anymore. I fear this because my journal for the last 5 years only exists online. Of course then, perhaps, you won’t care at all for the plays you had seen and the playbills would all be burned up or left behind anyway.
But my bottom line here is that you shouldn’t rely on the internet. Keep the playbills. At least for the plays you really liked.
Don’t listen to Laura! As she gets older, she’ll begin to see what clutter can do to a person.
I applaud the decision (I also support ridding yourself of the Disney magazines)! I’ll even help if you can’t bear to do the deed yourself. And congrats about the raise – you didn’t tell me!
Rachel-I love your comments. Keep ’em coming. Even though your story about the scrubs shirt goes against my ever cleaning out my room, because I live in fear of such a thing happening to me.
Laura-I understand your feelings, I shared them for a long time. But I was inspired to dispose of my Playbills when my boss told me he doesn’t keep his because there are copies of ever playbill preserved right here at the Library for the Performing Arts. I can request to look at any playbill at any time, so why keep my own collection when the library is actively preserving them? I do intend to keep ticket stubs as as my reminder of what I’ve seen.
Erin-Thanks for the support. My raise was too minimal to merit a mention (oooo, that was fun). It was the nice review by my boss that I was mentioning.
Kiki- I am enjoying your blog. I don’t think you should throw away your playbills, but I am not the best person to listen to caue I save everything. If you are going to throw them away anyways, you should sell them on ebay. Some of the older ones may sell for alot. Or, since you want to remember what shows you have seen, maybe you could make a little scrapbook of them or something with just the covers. You could throw away the book parts, but just glue the covers into pages of a book.
I forgot one other suggestion. Maybe you could donate them to B’way Cares cause they sell old playbills at the Broadway flea market.
Krystin-Good ideas both, I hadn’t thought of it. What do you think I could get for an entire season of Roundabout playbills? =)
Wanted to thank you for the post and also with you a happy new year. I am trying to get more involved with some projects online but darn work keeps getting in the way hahaha. Happy New year!