Throwing away things of value feels counterintuitive, but let me share with you something pretty extreme that we did.

My son is a martial artist. Years ago, he competed nationally and racked up an enormous number of trophies (many of them six feet high). We moved years ago, and packed them all into giant boxes probably numbering in the dozens. They remained in those boxes for several more moves. Nobody ever saw them, but they took up enormous space, and made our moves more expensive.

It turns out that my son is an even more extreme digital nomad than I am, so he readily agreed with our project: Photograph all the trophies (at least the ones that weren't damaged in the moves), and then get rid of them all. So we lined them up in the backyard, my son posed for the pictures, and I snapped away. We then donated most of the trophies to a local karate instructor who teaches small children. He removed my son's name and other details on the trophies and gave them to the kids in school tournaments he held.

For the first time ever, all my son's friends and family members have now seen his trophies, thanks to Facebook and photo-sharing sites. Which raises a philosophical question: Are the trophies gone now? Or were they "gone" before?

And we no longer have to manage all those boxes. Best of all, neither fire, nor time nor neglect can destroy the photographs we took of them.