You know you're Gen X when you still have these 7 items from the 90s stored somewhere in your house

Last month, I was searching through our garage for my trail running shoes when I stumbled upon a plastic bin I hadn't opened in years. Inside was a time capsule of my younger self: mix tapes with carefully curated playlists, a collection of Goosebumps books, and yes, even an old Caboodle filled with dried-up nail polish.

My partner Marcus walked by and asked what all the junk was. Junk? These were treasures.

If you're Gen X like me, you probably have your own version of this bin tucked away somewhere. Maybe it's in the attic, the back of a closet, or shoved under the basement stairs. We hold onto these items not because they're particularly useful, but because letting go feels like losing a piece of ourselves.

These objects aren't just stuff. They're reminders of a time before smartphones, before social media, before every moment was documented and shared.

1) VHS tapes and maybe even a VCR

Do you still have a box of VHS tapes collecting dust in your storage room? I do. There's something about those chunky rectangular cases that I just can't bring myself to toss.

Mine are mostly home videos, nothing fancy. Birthday parties, family gatherings, that one vacation where my parents rented a camcorder that weighed about ten pounds. The quality is terrible by today's standards, grainy and washed out, but that's part of their charm.

I haven't watched them in years, mostly because finding a working VCR feels like an archaeological expedition. But I keep them anyway. They represent Friday nights at Blockbuster, the ritual of choosing the perfect movie, hoping it was in stock, and then racing home to pop it in before dinner got cold.

Sure, streaming is convenient. But there was something special about physically holding your entertainment, about the commitment of choosing one movie for the evening instead of scrolling endlessly through options.

2) CDs and CD storage cases

Remember when owning a massive CD collection was a point of pride? I certainly do. Somewhere in my house, there's a leather CD wallet filled with albums I spent hours choosing at the music store.

The CD collection told people who you were. Mine was an eclectic mix of everything from alternative rock to pop, each disc representing a phase of my life. I'd spend entire weekends organizing them, debating whether to sort alphabetically or by genre.

I even kept the ones I burned myself, with track lists written in messy handwriting on the disc with a Sharpie. Those mix CDs were works of art, carefully curated playlists for specific moods or people. Making one for someone was basically a declaration of love or friendship.

These days, all my music lives on streaming apps. But I can't bring myself to throw out those physical discs. They're more than just music. They're memories pressed into polycarbonate plastic.

3) Boxes of photographs and photo albums

Here's where I really show my age. I have actual photo albums, the kind with plastic sleeves and sticky pages, filled with printed photographs from before digital cameras existed.

Looking through them now is a strange experience. Every photo was intentional because film was expensive and you only got 24 or 36 shots per roll. You couldn't just delete the bad ones instantly. You had to wait days to get them developed, and even the blurry or badly lit ones became part of the record.

There's something honest about these old photos that I don't see in today's filtered, retouched images. Nobody was trying to get the perfect angle or waiting for the ideal lighting. We just captured moments as they happened, imperfections and all.

I've kept all of mine, even the embarrassing ones with questionable fashion choices. They remind me of a time when documenting your life meant something different, when you couldn't scroll back through thousands of images on your phone.

4) Books from childhood and teen years

Walk into my house and you'll find an entire bookshelf dedicated to books from the 90s. Not first editions worth anything, just regular paperbacks I couldn't part with.

There are Goosebumps books with creased spines, young adult novels I read dozens of times, even a few textbooks from college that somehow survived multiple moves. I haven't opened most of them in decades, but they're staying put.

During my years as a financial analyst, reading was my escape from spreadsheets and market reports. But these older books represent something different. They're connections to who I was before I became defined by my career, before I spent 70-hour weeks analyzing numbers instead of diving into stories.

My partner doesn't understand why I won't donate them. But how do you explain that these books aren't just paper and ink? They're portals back to the person you were when you first read them, to lazy summer afternoons and late nights reading under the covers with a flashlight.

5) Old electronics and cables

This one's a bit embarrassing, but I know I'm not alone. Somewhere in a drawer, I have a tangled mess of cables and old electronics that probably don't even work anymore.

There's a Walkman I'm pretty sure still has batteries from 1997 slowly corroding inside. A Game Boy Color that's missing the back panel. Countless cables for devices I don't even own anymore, kept under the vague assumption that I might need them someday.

The rational part of my brain, the financial analyst who spent years optimizing efficiency, knows this is ridiculous. These things are obsolete. But the emotional part of me sees these objects as artifacts from a different era of technology, when upgrading meant something and devices felt more permanent.

I think about this sometimes during my morning runs, how we've moved from a world where things lasted to one where they're designed to be replaced. These old electronics in my drawer are like little rebellions against planned obsolescence.

6) Journals and notebooks

I started keeping a journal at 36 during my worst burnout period. But before that, I had notebooks. Lots of them. School notebooks filled with doodles in the margins, address books with phone numbers for people I haven't spoken to in 20 years, planners where I tracked everything before digital calendars existed.

I've filled 47 notebooks since I started journaling seriously, and I've kept every single one. Reading back through them is like having conversations with past versions of myself, some of whom I barely recognize.

There's the version of me who was desperate to climb the corporate ladder, the one who thought success meant sacrificing everything else. There's the version who was just starting to question whether the life I'd built was actually the one I wanted. And there's the version beginning to imagine something different.

These notebooks chart my transformation from financial analyst to writer, from someone who measured worth in salary figures to someone who values meaning over money. They're messy and honest in ways that digital documents somehow never are.

7) Sentimental items that make no sense to anyone else

And then there are the truly random items, the ones that would mean nothing to anyone but you. A ticket stub from a concert. A keychain from a place you visited once. A dried flower from an important occasion. Random trinkets that somehow survived multiple moves and purges.

I have a small box of these things. There's a ribbon from my first 10K race, back when running was just becoming a coping mechanism for work stress. A name tag from my first week at the investment firm where I'd eventually spend almost 20 years. A smooth stone I picked up on a trail run the day I decided to quit finance and pursue writing.

None of these items are valuable. Most people would call them clutter. But they're anchors to specific moments when my life changed direction, when I made decisions that shaped who I'd become.

My minimalist friends would have a field day with my sentimental collection. During my corporate years, I tried to be that person who kept nothing, who maintained clean surfaces and organized spaces. But that was me performing efficiency, not actually being myself.

Conclusion

So why do we keep this stuff? Why do we drag boxes of VHS tapes and CD cases and old photos through move after move, knowing we'll probably never use them again?

Maybe it's because these objects ground us in a time that feels increasingly distant. Gen X grew up analog and adapted to digital. We remember both worlds, and these items are proof we survived the transition.

Or maybe it's simpler than that. Maybe we keep them because throwing them away feels like erasing part of our story, like admitting that the person we were doesn't matter anymore.

I used to think holding onto the past meant you couldn't fully embrace the present. But now, standing in my garage surrounded by bins of 90s relics, I realize these objects aren't holding me back. They're reminders of where I started, of everything I survived and learned along the way.

You probably have your own collection of 90s artifacts tucked away somewhere. And that's okay. Let them stay there. Some things are worth keeping, even if you never open the boxes again.