There is a way for pack rats to get rid of keepsakes and still feel as if they’ve kept them. (Hint: It involves a camera.) 

By Kevyn Burger Special to the Star Tribune

When Kraig King’s mother moved from the California house he grew up in to assisted living, she shipped a box to his St. Louis Park home. It contained all his trophies — “and my ribbons, medals, pins and plaques, too,” said King with a laugh. “I’d kept it all.”

An accomplished athlete, King had accumulated quite a collection, starting with Little League and ending with his college basketball career.

“It was a great part of my life, but I don’t define myself by it and I would never display any of it,” said King, now 63 and a leadership consultant.

King admits he’s “a bit of a pack rat,” but his wife identifies as a minimalist. So it was her suggestion that he take photos of his hard-won hardware and then donate it rather than stowing it in their basement.

Without hesitation, King agreed.

“Someone could take my name plaque off the trophies and re-use them,” he said. “It’s fine that I don’t have the physical items; I have a representation of them. [The photographs] are my security blanket if I want to jog my memory. Pictures reduce the risk of regret.”

From young adults renting apartments without attics to their downsizing parents, the need to shed accumulated possessions is universal. But unloading items with a sentimental attachment can be painful.

That’s where a camera and the cloud come in.

Taking digital photographs and uploading them can create the illusion that keepsakes have somehow been “kept,” said Karen Winterich, a marketing professor at Pennsylvania State University.

“It’s often not the thing that people want,” she explained. “It’s the memory that the thing triggers.”

Winterich experienced that recently when she came across her junior high basketball shorts in a dresser drawer. Though she hadn’t worn them in years, she had them on when her team scored an upset victory over their biggest rival.

“I was keeping them because they reminded me that I used to be a pretty good basketball player and I didn’t want to forget that part of myself,” she said. “Once I realized that, I could let them go.”

Winterich tested her photo theory with a field study conducted in six Penn State residence halls at the end of a semester. In half the dorms, a simple donation drive was advertised. The other half got fliers that read: “Don’t Pack Up Your Sentimental Clutter. Keep a Photo of It, Then Donate.”

Winterich and her fellow researchers saw a significant increase in the number of items donated by students who’d been cued to take pictures.

“There’s less psychological discomfort if they feel they can retrieve the memory with the tool of a photograph,” she concluded. “The act of taking a picture relieves them of the anxiety of parting with the item.”

Scores of people looking to streamline their basements, attics and garages could embrace the camera/cloud technique to help them let go of things they no longer need.

Our collective need to hang onto stuff has contributed to an ever-expanding storage industry. Last year, Americans spent $37 billion at some 50,000 self-storage facilities. In fact, one in 11 Americans is paying rent to store excess possessions.

The self-storage industry has seen 7.7% annual growth since 2012, but the tide may turn as more people experience the heady liberation of owning less. In her books and Netflix series, Japanese minimalist Marie Kondo has inspired thousands of pack rats to purge possessions that “don’t spark joy.”

The phenomenon has led to tidal wave of donations at thrift shops, but few, if any, regrets, said Molly King, marketing manager at the four Arc’s Value Village outlets.

“By the time they get those boxes to the stores, they’re done with it,” she said. “They’re a little bit sad, but mostly relieved.”

She’s also noticed that there’s a generational divide to being able to deal with — or prevent — overaccumulation.

“Younger people are into what’s called ‘circular inventory.’ Their stuff comes in and then it goes out,” she said. “They never plan to own something forever. They use Uber and Rent the Runway. Everything is temporary and that makes it easier to donate.”

That ability to let things go even applies to items that have been handed down by parents and grandparents.

“We’re going through a cultural change in the digital era,” said Clay Routledge, a psychology professor at North Dakota State University who researches nostalgia.

“In the pre-internet era, family heirlooms were passed down, but today young adults don’t want them, they don’t care about the physical thing. That’s not a value judgment, it’s just different,” he said.

Younger people have fewer things than their boomer parents, and therefore, less of an attachment to things.

“When people have their music, movies, photos and books in the cloud, they have fewer things to feel sentimental about,” said Routledge.

Tossing the stuff

Of course, there are some sentimental possessions you can’t donate. No one wants your T-shirts, ticket stubs or greeting cards. Or the handmade treasures that every parent gathers.

That’s what Wendy Welter Albee started photographing.

“My three kids are grown and I still had boxes full of all the pictures they drew for me, their school artwork and the little clay projects they made,” she said. “I’ve been hanging onto it forever.”

After retiring from the Air Force, Albee of Andover, had time to sort through the childhood memorabilia and select a few of the most delightful items to save.

She took pictures of the rest and was able to toss it all away.

“I didn’t feel even a twinge of regret,” said Albee.

In fact, it felt so good that it inspired her to cull her collection of thousands of books and start donating them to charity stores.

Items ready for a garage Sale or to be given to charity

When Kraig King’s mother moved from the California house he grew up in to assisted living, she shipped a box to his St. Louis Park home. It contained all his trophies — “and my ribbons, medals, pins and plaques, too,” said King with a laugh. “I’d kept it all.”

An accomplished athlete, King had accumulated quite a collection, starting with Little League and ending with his college basketball career.

“It was a great part of my life, but I don’t define myself by it and I would never display any of it,” said King, now 63 and a leadership consultant.

King admits he’s “a bit of a pack rat,” but his wife identifies as a minimalist. So it was her suggestion that he take photos of his hard-won hardware and then donate it rather than stowing it in their basement. Without hesitation, King agreed.

“Someone could take my name plaque off the trophies and re-use them,” he said. “It’s fine that I don’t have the physical items; I have a representation of them. [The photographs] are my security blanket if I want to jog my memory. Pictures reduce the risk of regret.”

A photo of a modern digital single lens reflex camera on a white background.

From young adults renting apartments without attics to their downsizing parents, the need to shed accumulated possessions is universal. But unloading items with a sentimental attachment can be painful. That’s where a camera and the cloud come in.

Taking digital photographs and uploading them can create the illusion that keepsakes have somehow been “kept,” said Karen Winterich, a marketing professor at Pennsylvania State University.

“It’s often not the thing that people want,” she explained. “It’s the memory that the thing triggers.”

Winterich experienced that recently when she came across her junior high basketball shorts in a dresser drawer. Though she hadn’t worn them in years, she had them on when her team scored an upset victory over their biggest rival.

“I was keeping them because they reminded me that I used to be a pretty good basketball player and I didn’t want to forget that part of myself,” she said. “Once I realized that, I could let them go.”

Winterich tested her photo theory with a field study conducted in six Penn State residence halls at the end of a semester. In half the dorms, a simple donation drive was advertised. The other half got fliers that read: “Don’t Pack Up Your Sentimental Clutter. Keep a Photo of It, Then Donate.”

Winterich and her fellow researchers saw a significant increase in the number of items donated by students who’d been cued to take pictures.

“There’s less psychological discomfort if they feel they can retrieve the memory with the tool of a photograph,” she concluded. “The act of taking a picture relieves them of the anxiety of parting with the item.”

No donor remorse.

Scores of people looking to streamline their basements, attics and garages could embrace the camera/cloud technique to help them let go of things they no longer need.

Our collective need to hang onto stuff has contributed to an ever-expanding storage industry. Last year, Americans spent $37 billion at some 50,000 self-storage facilities. In fact, one in 11 Americans is paying rent to store excess possessions.

The self-storage industry has seen 7.7% annual growth since 2012, but the tide may turn as more people experience the heady liberation of owning less. In her books and Netflix series, Japanese minimalist Marie Kondo has inspired thousands of pack rats to purge possessions that “don’t spark joy.”

The phenomenon has led to tidal wave of donations at thrift shops, but few, if any, regrets, said Molly King, marketing manager at the four Arc’s Value Village outlets.

“By the time they get those boxes to the stores, they’re done with it,” she said. “They’re a little bit sad, but mostly relieved.”

She’s also noticed that there’s a generational divide to being able to deal with — or prevent — overaccumulation.

“Younger people are into what’s called ‘circular inventory.’ Their stuff comes in and then it goes out,” she said. “They never plan to own something forever. They use Uber and Rent the Runway. Everything is temporary and that makes it easier to donate.”

That ability to let things go even applies to items that have been handed down by parents and grandparents.

“We’re going through a cultural change in the digital era,” said Clay Routledge, a psychology professor at North Dakota State University who researches nostalgia.

“In the pre-internet era, family heirlooms were passed down, but today young adults don’t want them, they don’t care about the physical thing. That’s not a value judgment, it’s just different,” he said.

Younger people have fewer things than their boomer parents, and therefore, less of an attachment to things.

“When people have their music, movies, photos and books in the cloud, they have fewer things to feel sentimental about,” said Routledge.

Tossing the stuff

Of course, there are some sentimental possessions you can’t donate. No one wants your T-shirts, ticket stubs or greeting cards. Or the handmade treasures that every parent gathers.

That’s what Wendy Welter Albee started photographing.

“My three kids are grown and I still had boxes full of all the pictures they drew for me, their school artwork and the little clay projects they made,” she said. “I’ve been hanging onto it forever.”

After retiring from the Air Force, Albee of Andover, had time to sort through the childhood memorabilia and select a few of the most delightful items to save. She took pictures of the rest and was able to toss it all away. “I didn’t feel even a twinge of regret,” said Albee.

In fact, it felt so good that it inspired her to cull her collection of thousands of books and start donating them to charity stores.

“Getting rid of stuff feels freeing,” she said. “Empty space feels better than full.”

As for Kraig King, he hung onto a single item from his trophy collection: the plaque he was awarded when inducted into his college’s basketball hall of fame.

He photographed all the rest. And those photos? He hasn’t looked at them since he uploaded them.

“Not once,” he said. “They’re online someplace, but finding them is not a high priority. It’s funny. Knowing they’re there is enough.”

Kevyn Burger is a Minneapolis based freelance broadcaster and writer.

In 18 years, a college degree could cost about $500,000

People worried about college affordability today can at least take this to heart: Getting a degree now is an absolute bargain compared to what it could cost if tuition keeps rising this fast for the next couple of decades.

Tuition has been rising by about 6% annually, according to investment management company Vanguard. At this rate, when babies burn today are turning 18, a year of higher education at a private school — including tuition, fees, and room and board — will cost more than $120,000, Vanguard said. Public colleges could average out to $54,000 a year.

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That means without financial aid, the sticker price of a four-year college degree for children born today could reach half a million dollars at private schools, and a quarter million at public ones. That’s a for a family with one kid; those with more could be facing a bill that reaches seven figures.

How much will a year of college cost in the future?

How much families realistically need to save for their children to go to college is a very real question for new parents.

“When you look at these numbers and how college has increased from an inflation standpoint historically, it is staggering,” said Maria Bruno, a senior investment strategist at Vanguard.

Many factors have been blamed over the years — a decline in state funding for public schools, along with administrative bloat, rising salaries and new construction at private colleges.

Incomes, meanwhile, have not kept up. In 2015 the median income for families with children rose by 4.3%, and in 2014 by 3%. If family income continues to grow at 4.3% each year, it will reach about $142,000 in 18 years.

Bruno estimates to save enough to cover 50% of tuition, families will need to put away (and invest) about $1,000 each month for the next 17 years if their child wants to attend a private school, $320 per month for a public school, and $147 per month for community college.

It’s a serious burden for new parents, plenty of whom still have their own college debt to pay off, and who are also advised to put aside 10% to 15% of their income for retirement. Bruno said retirement should take priority over college funds, “because there’s the possibility that other resources may be available” to help pay for education.

“With limited resources and multiple goals, it can be very overwhelming,” she said.

The silver lining, according to Jennifer Ma, senior policy research scientist at the College Board, is about 70% of students get some grant or scholarship money and pay less than the so-called “sticker price.” And while $121,000-per-year private college may seem like an option for only the wealthy, she added that private schools account for roughly 30% of undergrads anyhow; the majority go to public colleges.

Yet this free scholarship money is not enough, even at public schools. About 60% of undergrads borrow money Of those at public colleges who took out loans, the average debt is $26,800, said Ma. At nonprofit private colleges, the average is $31,400.

Ma even had a note of relative optimism for new parents. In recent years college costs have increased at a slower rate than the 6% in Vanguard’s model — something closer to 4%. “These days, colleges and universities have an enormous amount of pressure to minimize costs and control tuition increases, more so than in the past than 20 to 30 years,” she said.

A couple of percentage points really add up. At a growth rate of 4%, four years of college will cost about $185,000 at a public school, and $363,000 at a private college, according to the College Board’s college cost calculator. No sweat, right?

This article originally appeared on Buzzfeed.

The sudden loss of a loved one can trigger a variety of psychiatric disorders in people with no history of mental illness, according to researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and colleagues at Columbia’s School of Social Work and Harvard Medical School. While previous studies have suggested there is a link between sudden bereavement and an onset of common psychiatric disorders, this is the first study to show the association of acute bereavement and mania in a large population sample. Findings are published online in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

In people aged 30 years or older, the unexpected death of a loved one roughly doubled the risk for new-onset mania after controlling for prior psychiatric diagnoses, other traumatic experiences, and certain demographic variables like sex, race, income, education, and marital status. For those 50–54 years of age or ≥70 years, the risk increase was more than fivefold. There was no significant effect in people younger than 30 years.

The researchers analyzed data from 27,534 participants in the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Between about 20% and 30% of these participants identified the unexpected death of a loved one as the most traumatic event in their lives. This was still the case among those reporting 11 or more lifetime traumatic events, where losing a loved one unexpectedly was most traumatic for 22%.

“Our findings should alert clinicians to the possible onset of a wide range of psychiatric disorders, including disorders such as mania, after an unexpected death in otherwise healthy individuals,” says Katherine Keyes, PhD, assistant professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School, and principal investigator. “However, it is also notable that the majority of individuals in the present study did not develop mental health issues in the wake of an unexpected death of a loved one.”

Losing a loved one suddenly also raised the risk of major depression, excessive use of alcohol, and anxiety disorders, including panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and phobias. The largest risk increases were for post-traumatic stress disorder, which was seen across age groups with an increased risk as high as 30-fold. Most other disorders were concentrated in the older age groups.

While developing a psychiatric disorder for the first time in old age is relatively rare, these data indicate that psychiatric disorder onset in older age is commonly associated with the death of a loved one, according to the authors.

“Clinically, our results highlight the importance of considering a possible role for loss of close personal relationships through death in assessment of psychiatric disorders. When someone loses a close personal relationship, even late in life, there is a profound effect on sense of self and self-reflection. These data indicate that, even in adults with no history of psychiatric disorders, it is also a vulnerable risk period for the onset of a potentially disabling psychiatric disorder,” says Dr. Keyes.

Co-authors are Mailman School Department of Epidemiology’s Charissa Pratt, MPH, and Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH; Katie A. McLaughlin, PhD, Harvard Medical School; Karestan C. Koenen, PhD, Mailman School Department of Epidemiology; and M. Katherine Shear, MD, Columbia School of Social Work.

Dr. Shear received a contract from Guilford Press to write a grief treatment manual. The other authors report no financial relationships with commercial interests.