kiddo #2 (looking in the extra room’s closet for some random other thing): What’s in this old shoebox? Who’s is it?
me: Well, it’s our old cellphones.
kiddo #2: Why did you keep them?
me: We were told that if you dispose of an old phone, some mystery “someone” would be able to access all kinds of personal information from it. Just like all the conspiracy theories floating around right now, this might be a legitimate one.
kiddo#2 (rolls eyes and walks out of room mumbling): whatever Mom.
me (pondering voiceover): maybe I should go through these – definitely more interesting than lesson planning.
A trip down cellphone memory lane.
My first cell phone was a purchase by my Mom. She was worried I was driving alone at night and so bought the phone and paid for the first year of service. This was about 1990-1991. I still have the same phone number! This monster had a plan for 60 minutes of talk per month.
We upgraded in the late 90’s to the Nokia phone of the day. We also got one for John at that time. No idea where the other one is but it’s information is probably out there being used for nefarious purposes!
Now I have to clarify that some of these phones belonged to the kiddos. My mom also felt when they got to high school they needed their own phone. She again purchased and paid for the first year and all these years later, we are still paying!
Remember when you could look at a text and it didn’t count against your 50 per month???
Decluttering the Stuff 
Straight Talk is a good company. I have never dropped a phone call or had any problems with the phone itself. Flip phones are outdated in my personal opinion.
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Straight Talk phone service is a good choice.
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Lol!! You can start your own cellphones thru the years museum!! Can you reset to factory settings?
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hahaha I actually joked that we could do just that!
I did the factory reset twice on each one – that tells you how much I didn’t want to lesson plan!
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That would be funny, a cell phone thru the years… 😉 Lesson planning- gah!! A pain to be avoided, for sure!!
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LOL I knew you would understand my procrastination!
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Definitely!! 😉
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Here’s my thought.. be sure to download any photos or recordings that might have been left on the phones. You might be surprised what treasures are on them. 🙂
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I did check them before doing a factory reset twice. It seems like we had already removed all the photos and messages on most of them.
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We had some of our father’s voice mails on an old phone. He passed several years ago, but we were able to retrieve those voicemails and download them to media files. Those voicemails are some of our most cherished possessions.😊
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What a great idea! Hadn’t even thought of that.
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I am positive that I have every single one of these phones in my house!! Lol!! Besides the Nefarious Others getting our personal info, I figure that each of the newer old ones also have unloaded pics and contacts so I keep them too. When my youngest kids were in middle school, we were told they shouldn’t bring cellphones to school. Then they lost one of the kids at a track meet and as I was panicking, the teacher said, “well why doesn’t she have a cellphone?” So, they got cellphones in middle school.
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I did a complete reset to factory on every one of them but 1 twice. I think I’ve got it covered but . . .
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