Donating your things is a sophisticated way of saying that you are letting go of something, whether willingly or not. Perhaps therein lies the difficulty in some cases, even though what you intend to donate has little or no value: we don't want to let go, to let go, to leave behind. Have I been there? Of course I have.

First, I want to point out: I am against giving away to another something useless or in poor condition. An example of this is clothing. My wife sometimes says to me: "Adrian, give away those shirts you no longer wear." And I reply that I don't wear them because they already have some details on them, and I'm embarrassed to give something like that to someone else. It's like saying: "Hello Carlos. I love you very much. Here you have this shirt. It's a bit faded and the collar is a little bit dirty. I don't wear it anymore because it looks ugly. But now it's yours. You'll see you'll like it." That makes no sense to me! If I give someone something as a gift, it's because it looks good and they'll be able to wear it.

Of course, there are your exceptions. Some will serve them is to work in the field, just to protect from the sun, or to transform it into something else. Also, many go through the unfortunate natural disasters and can use these and other items because of their state of emergency. They are at zero! Then there are those who want it badly, and one can understand why.

Now we come to the case that was surely on the minds of those who propose the #KISS this week: when there is something we know is useless and we find it hard to part with it, perhaps because of the attachment we have developed or the sentimental value it has.

Yes, I have been in those situations several times, and the first thing I have to say is that to effectively get rid of those things we need one of two things: time or a strong determination obtained by a sudden event. If we part with that without being prepared we will have a bad time. I remember a couple of occasions that show that sometimes it can be done, and sometimes not.

In my childhood I managed to complete three complete collections of some small dolls that were hard to have. We even went so far as to make a small piece of furniture to display them at home. I had a hard time completing them! But as the years went by it was more noticeable that they were just objects gathering dust. The day I decided to donate them came, but the day I actually donated them came three years later. My wife helped me define the criteria, and then I visited several children we know and showed them all to them, letting them select two. When they selected them, I kept the others, and allowed myself to take them in my hands again, and then put them in their hands. I still don't know what real meaning those pieces of plastic had for me, but let's just say that since I had taken the time I found the strength to be able to part with them. It is worth mentioning that I did it several times, in several houses, because there were several children who received part of those collections.

However, on other occasions, sometimes it is not possible to donate what we want, at least for now. Some time ago, some friends were leaving the country. I was sure I would never see them in person again. I wanted them to take something of mine with them that was valuable to me and that they could remember. One of them told me how limited their luggage would be, and that is why I would not take many things with me. So, as we talked about so many topics in the days we were together before their departure, we talked about music, and how much I loved a specific band that I went out of my way to have only their original albums. The band still exists but it's not that famous, so in those years you couldn't buy their records through the ways of piracy. How many would want to risk their skin to spread the word about that band? Well, I guess I was one of the few. So to get them I had to go through several record stores.

We saw the records together, and they, a few years younger than me, were shocked to see this kind of material. Today, digital predominates, downloads to our mobile devices, streaming music, both audio and video, etc. There I understood that although it was very valuable for me, it would not be for them. Besides, the best thing about those discs is supposed to be listening to their content. Where would they do that, if there are barely a few disc players surviving in some homes? Many of them are already broken and unusable, I even have those albums in .mp3 on my computer! We were in the presence of something with emotional, sentimental value, an intangible value that probably only I have. I couldn't give it away, no matter how much it seems to be just history.

I don't have photos of the collections I mentioned, but since I do have the records, it was useful to decorate this post. The minimalist style includes our donations to other people and institutions. But I suppose that, as in many subjects of study, we did not manage as a student or practitioner to achieve the highest grade.