Keeping some items when emptying the trash

I've gathered a lot of trash since I got my MacBook last year and would like to clean up. Is there a way to select files from 2008 and delete those trash items only? Or can I lock 2009 trash items and then use the empty trash button to delete the other items? I seldom access a trashed item, but it would be comforting to know the more recent junk is still there ... just in case.
I use Time Machine for a backup, so I assume that if this doesn't work, I could access an earlier version of the trash basket to find and recover a deleted file. Or could I?
Thanks,
Charles

Hi Charles;
Trash is an extremely poor place to store anything. Time Machine like most good backup tools ignores Trash when it backs up so you will not be able to recover anything that was in Trash from it.
To answer your original question there is no simple way of doing what you are asking to do. Probably the best thing for you to do is create another folder and move everything out of Trash. This will get backed up. Then you can go through and move files to Trash and empty it immediately.
Allan

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anyone got any ideas?
In my trash are some of my old time machine back ups if that makes a difference.
I get the following error message when I try and empty the trash;
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Keeping some items when emptying the trash

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