I’m not really a “stuff” person. I have one box of letters and postcards from my childhood . . . and that’s it. No trophies, no pictures (my parent’s weren’t picture people, maybe I’m overcompensating?), no toys, no remains of my life pre-marriage (oh, wait, I also have some of my books from growing up).
This “get rid of it” attitude makes it hard to keep things when multiplied by five kids! But I wanted to keep little things from the kid’s school days -things they may want to look through some day, to give them perspective on where they’ve been, how they’ve grown, and hopefully give them a little chuckle.
So through out the year I set aside little things they bring home – a spelling test they’ve mastered, or an art project they’ve worked hard on, an award for their awesomeness – and put them into bags. Slowly those bags fill to varying degrees. And in the top back corner of a closet, I have all of the bags, accumulated, labeled, ready for the day when the kids want to sift through them.
“You should put them in books” Wyatt tells me. But I don’t want to give myself the work. Instead they are sealed in 2.5 gallon zipper bags. I think that’s enough. I have no grand illusions that my children will want to keep the stuff themselves when they are old enough and moving through life. But you never know.