‘Why don’t you chuck away all those books and get an e-reader?,’ a friend asked, proceeding a recent move. And what to do with the boxes of CDs, which have been gathering dust in boxes for years? ‘Now is not the time to decide,’ another friend, who was helping me move, said. ‘Just bring them.’

Progress in technology means we can have it all and most of it can be stored on an iCloud. But those of us who love the smell of an old book that was given by a thoughtful friend, looking at our ‘90s CD covers and flicking through photo albums, are clinging onto nostalgia. The items, themselves, are redundant, taking up precious space in our small city apartments.

Rather different to today’s positive associations, nostalgia was once considered a medical condition similar to homesickness – perhaps because it is often triggered by negative feelings. However, research shows that nostalgia improves mood, increases social connectedness, enhances positive self-regard, and provides existential meaning.

I’ve previously blogged about how the downside of our exponential times includes feeling left behind and insecure, but what if accumulating less stuff also decreases our sense of social connectedness?

It’s rather like connecting with friends on Facebook instead of in ‘real’ time… However, Skype allows us to stay in touch (albeit with a lot of repetitions of ‘Can you hear me?’) with friends who are living on the other side of the world.

As Ally Condie wrote in Matched, ‘It is strange how we hold on to the pieces of the past while we wait for our futures.’ By getting rid of the old and redundant, we pave the way for the new and beneficial. But equally, we have to value the past to remind ourselves where we need to be heading…