Keepsake, or Throw it Away For Heaven’s Sake?
Posted
August 17, 2008 at
10:43 am by
Rita
Like all first time parents, I kept every little scribble, every little doodle, and every handwriting sheet that my son produced for the first bunch of years of his life. I kept a scrapbook. Not a SCRAPBOOK, with the stickers and the speech bubbles and things you find in that hallowed section of the craft stores, but a regular old-fashioned scrapbook with manila pages that I taped things onto or stuffed things between. He had a separate School Days Book with sections for each grade—a place for his school picture, his teacher’s name, his favorite subject, and so on.
Fast-forward a couple of kids and do I really need to explain what happened?
The three-year-old’s scrapbook has the first few pages filled with ultrasound photos, hospital bracelets and cards of congratulations for being born and the rest is empty. I have still saved things, though. I’ve moved to a “Box System.” This is less elaborate than the title might suggest. It doesn’t involve neatly stacked and labeled boxes of uniform type and size, which was my original intention. Or even a separate box for each kid, which would be nice. So, it’s not really a system at all, I guess. It’s just a box. One big box in the closet. When pieces of crap, or, um, invaluable mementos, have been sitting around in bins and on desktops or secured magnetically to the fridge door too long, I scoop them up and put them in the box. The big kids’ things conveniently have names and dates on them, thanks to the school requiring them to put that information on all their papers. I make an effort on the little one’s things to name and roughly date them. I take photos of their big projects. Then into the box it all goes.
But, what’s the plan for the box? When I first started dumping things willy-nilly into the box, I promised myself I would eventually go through the box and sort things into scrap books, School Days Books and put the bigger things into individual, nicely labeled–and in my mind–fireproof boxes. Now, I’m starting to believe that will never happen. I think when this box is full, I’ll just tape it up and call it Box 1 or something as equally unoriginal, and then start on a second Box (which will probably be called Box B, knowing me, and then the third Box will be Box 2, just so it’s as messed up as it can be).
I need to ask, am I really ever going to open the box and sift through it? Am I going to seriously hand off all this stuff back to my kids at some future date? I have my own childhood scrapbook and I think I looked at it once in my twenties out of curiosity. I vaguely remember being unimpressed with the art I produced at the age of three, but I did write some mighty fine poetry about rain in kindergarten. Same with the School Days Book my parents diligently kept for me. Once, early in our marriage, my husband and I took both his book and my book out to compare old report cards. It wasn’t as fun as we thought it would be. It was actually pretty dull.
If the kids are like us, then they’ll keep this crap we give back to them and stick it in their own drawers or closets out of some feeling of obligation to keep it, but not really wanting to ever look at it. So, is it for them, this keeping of stuff, or is it for me, to help me remember what it was like when they were little?
You’ve just got to wonder will all these keepsakes be appreciated, or when I open this box some years down the road will I just be pissed to be once again haunted by all this same stuff that cluttered my desktops and got moved from place to place until I could finally get it out of my sight, into the box in the back of the closet? I don’t know what to do with it now, so am I’m just procrastinating, letting myself figure out what to do with it later?
Tags: keepsakes, mementos, school days, scrapbooking |
4 Responses to “Keepsake, or Throw it Away For Heaven’s Sake?”
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Leave a comment
Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately in an effort to remove commercial messages, irrelevancies, excessive foul language, racist/sexist/hateful comments, spoofed/cloaked IPs and/or personal attacks and will be edited/deleted at our discretion. Thank you for your patience.
1. Kymberly said:
August 17, 2008 @ 10:49 am
Girl I am a scrapbooker (but shudder at the thought of speech bubble stickers I promise!)
That said, I found the best way to handle all this was plain old 3-ring office style binders and a 100 pack of plastic slip-in page protectors (for like $3).
I slide all the artwork in - sure some thigs need a little fold or two but I’ve found most kid art fits in an 8.5×11 page. I don’t save everything - just the memorable things featuring handprints, drawings of our family (I love anything where I appear stick thin
and so on.
They sit on a bookshelf and so far, even as sentimental and prolific a saver I am, my daughter is only on her second binder (and she’s 9!)
3-D crafts I snap a photo of and consider it good. I love my children’s every creation but I just can’t keep it all.
A few bucks worth of office supplies really got the craft and keepsake art clutter under control. Not to mention that now my kids can actually leaf through their “masterpiece” books. We enjoy seeing their art progress from toddler scribbles to paragraphs about why they love pizza
2. Rita said:
August 17, 2008 @ 6:31 pm
But, see, you DO it. Trust me, slipping the papers in-between manila pages isn’t hard either. But, it’s not as easy as a BOX to just dump it all into and have it out of sight. I’m terrible. At least my photos are all in nice albums and well marked. At least I’ve kept up with something.
3. momof3_MOD said:
August 19, 2008 @ 1:21 pm
I have about 3 scrapbooks filled for my two older children but my youngest has a 1/2 of 1! I am a packrat! I keep EVERYTHING!!! Right down to their umbillical cords (dont judge, just laugh it off! I know Im weird! lol) outfit they wore home from the hospital, binkies, newborn diaper (clean not used!), first lock of hair and first teeth, among many other things!!! My hubs and I wrote them each a little letter about what they were like when they were first born and how excited we were when we found out we were going to have him/her. We sealed them and put them in their scrapbooks and when they turn 16 or 18 or have their own kids they will get the book and then get to read the letter.
When my oldest was in pre-k and kindergarten I kept EVERTHING! I put it all in a dresser that we keep in our office that (at the time) wasnt being used. Now that we have 3 kids I need all the space I can get! So I need to do some cleaning out too and only keep things that are extra speacial and really good works of “art”.
My parents had a box for me and one for my sister. We still have them but to be honest I dont even know where mine is at anymore. I used to go through it a lot when I was younger but now Im too busy with my own kids and their stuff to be looking through the things I did when I was young. Someday when theyre older I’ll get them each a cedar chest/keepsake chest and put all their things in them that way theyre out of the way and out of my mind. Until then…I guess I have to buy some trash bags and start a cleanin!
I dont really think that theyll appreciate the things as much as we did when they brought them home from school or finished them at the art table but I will keep a couple of things just to say I did. Because you know if you dont then you’ll be hearin about it later on, ‘Why didnt you keep anything of mine?’ and so on.
4. GrandmafrmKs. said:
August 19, 2008 @ 2:51 pm
Momof3 when my oldest turned 16, the first thing I bought for her was a cedar chest, then every year for B’day and christmas we would add things to it, she still has her first set of dishes, she also put things in there that her grandmas had made for her,
I had an old trunk, I kept all their junk in, and They have gotten it all back, and even my son and DIL were so happy to get them, he is 42 and still has his first baby blanket, both his kids used it to, I have a beautiful gown and robe hubby bought me for our 25th, and one of the girls wore it to have her and her first baby daughters picture taken in, it is absolutely beautiful,
My oldesat sat in church, when she was 9 and wrote a beautiful poem about our church, her husband had it framed and it now hangs in his office, Heres a good one, I still have a corner off of a ten dollar bill that came from my hubbies first pay check after we were married, yes the kids find that really funny, but back in the 60’s we took out $12.50 a week, put it in the fruit bowl on the table, and whalla there was our $50.00 for rent, Thats not even water bill money today, Any way , save those keep sakes, the kids will appreciate them.