Quick Answer: There are six real options: keep them unread, reread selectively, extract what matters and discard the rest, destroy them deliberately, write a summary of each period and then let the volumes go, or switch to a format that doesn’t accumulate. There’s no correct answer — but two rules help everyone. Decide once rather than re-deciding every time you see the shelf, and never reread during a low period.

There’s a shelf. On it are eight notebooks containing, in your own handwriting, the worst three weeks of 2019, a breakup you’ve since gotten over, and roughly forty pages of complaining about a job you left years ago.

Nobody plans for this part. You start journaling because someone said it helps, and it does — and then the notebooks just… stay.

Why old journals become a problem

You mostly wrote when you were struggling. This is the crucial thing, and almost nobody notices it until they reread. Good weeks don’t generate the urge to write. Hard weeks do. So the archive is systematically skewed toward your worst moments.

Which means it’s not a record of your life. It’s a record of your difficult periods, with the ordinary and good ones largely missing. Reading it back and concluding “I was miserable for years” is a sampling error, not a discovery.

Rereading can reopen things. Old entries carry emotional charge. Reading a detailed account of a period you’d processed and moved past can reactivate it in a way that a memory alone wouldn’t.

Privacy becomes a real worry. Most people eventually think about who’d read these if something happened to them. That worry is legitimate and it’s a valid reason to act.

They accumulate physically. Eight notebooks becomes twenty. There’s no natural stopping point and no plan.

The six options

1. Keep them unread. Entirely valid, and probably the most common outcome. The journals did their job when you wrote them; nothing obligates you to ever open them again. Box them, put them somewhere out of sight, and stop treating the shelf as an unfinished task.

2. Reread selectively. Pick one specific period, for a specific reason — you want to remember what a particular year was actually like, or you’re curious whether a pattern you’re noticing now is old. Deliberate, bounded, chosen. Not a chronological read-through of everything.

3. Extract and discard. Go through, pull out the pages worth keeping — the good entries, the useful insights, the funny bits, the things about people you’ve lost — and let the rest go. Many people find the keepers amount to maybe 5% of the volume.

4. Destroy them deliberately. Burning, shredding, or recycling old journals as an intentional act. People report this feeling significant rather than sad. It’s your writing and you’re allowed to destroy it. Some people make a small ritual of it; some just feed them into a shredder on a Tuesday.

5. Summarize, then release. Write one page about each period — what happened, what you learned, what you’d want to remember — then let the original volumes go. You keep the meaning and lose the weight.

6. Change format going forward. A one-line-a-day journal, a five-year journal with four lines per date, or a gratitude format accumulates far less and skews far less negative. This doesn’t solve the existing shelf, but it stops the problem growing.

What nobody tells you about rereading your old journals

You’ll cringe, and it’s not about the writing. It’s about recognizing yourself. The intensity of caring about something that turned out not to matter is uncomfortable in a very specific way. It passes.

You’ll find you were right about things you talked yourself out of. This is the most common genuinely useful discovery — a person you had doubts about, a job you knew wasn’t working, a pattern you spotted and dismissed. Old journals are surprisingly good evidence that your instincts were fine.

You’ll have almost no memory of most of it. People expect a reread to be a vivid return. Usually it’s reading about a stranger with your handwriting. That’s oddly freeing.

The version of you who wrote it isn’t asking for anything. People sometimes feel a loyalty to their past self — that destroying the journals is a betrayal. It isn’t. The writing served its purpose at the time it was written.

Deciding once is most of the relief. The weight isn’t the notebooks. It’s the unresolved decision you re-encounter every time you see them. Whatever you choose, choosing is the part that helps.

How to decide

Ask what the journal was for. This resolves most of it:

• Written to process? Journaling for anxiety, stress, or working through something — the value was in the writing, and it’s already been collected. These can go without loss.
• Written as a record? A travel journal, a first year of parenthood, a period you consciously wanted to document — different purpose, and worth keeping.
• Mixed? Most are. That’s what the extract-and-discard option is for.

Don’t reread during a low period. Old difficult entries land very differently depending on where you are now. If you’re in a hard stretch, this is not the week. Wait for a stable one.

Decide once, not repeatedly. Set aside an afternoon, make the call, and act on it. The recurring low-grade decision is worse than any of the outcomes.

Know that destroying them is allowed. People need permission for this more often than for anything else on the list. It’s your writing. There’s no archive that needs it.

Choose a format going forward, deliberately. Whatever you decide about the old ones, pick a future format that suits how you actually want to use journaling — so you’re not back here with another shelf in five years.

A note on the heavier stuff

If old journals document trauma, abuse, or a mental health crisis, rereading them alone isn’t the same task as flipping through a travel diary, and it can be genuinely destabilizing. Consider doing it with a therapist, or not doing it at all — you’re allowed to destroy those unread. If you find that revisiting old writing consistently leaves you low for days, that’s worth mentioning to a mental health professional rather than pushing through on your own.

FAQ

Should I throw away my old journals?

There’s no universal answer, but a useful test is what the journal was for. Journals written to process difficult feelings have already delivered their value in the writing — those can go. Journals kept as a record of a period you want to remember have ongoing value. When in doubt, extract the pages that matter and discard the rest.

Is it bad to reread old journals?

Not inherently, but timing matters. Rereading during a stable period can be genuinely useful and often reassuring. Rereading during a low period tends to amplify it, partly because journals systematically over-represent your hardest weeks. Choose a specific period to read rather than starting at volume one.

What do people do with journals before they die?

Common approaches include destroying them, leaving written instructions for someone to destroy them unread, extracting and keeping only what’s meant to be shared, or explicitly leaving them as a record for family. The important part is deciding rather than leaving it to chance — an unlabeled box of journals puts a difficult decision on someone else.

TL;DR:

• Your journals over-represent your hard weeks — you wrote when struggling, not when fine.
• Six options: keep unread, reread selectively, extract and discard, destroy, summarize then release, or change format going forward.
• Ask what the journal was for: processing journals can go; record journals may be worth keeping.
• Never reread during a low period. Wait for a stable one.
• Decide once, in one afternoon — the recurring decision is the actual weight.
• You are allowed to destroy your own writing. No archive needs it.
• If the journals document trauma, consider doing this with a therapist or not at all.