I was reading through the posts from my friends on Facebook and came across one where the poster said, “I think I can truthfully say that I kept every award, essay, art project, homemade book, concert/performance program, birthday/graduation card, sheet music, script, report card, club photo, and every other piece of information regarding my K-12 experience.  So…I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it.”  She also commented that it all only took up one big storage tub. 

My first thought was, “Why is she keeping all of that stuff?”  Why would she even want to?  There seems to be three types of people, those who are sentimental about everything, those who want to keep some items but not all and those who see no need to hold onto things like this.  After some thought I commented back that I thought she should go through it all and figure out exactly what was really important to her. Once that was done, she should take pictures of those things and, since she is a scrapbooker, create some layouts for those pictures. 

All of this started me thinking about people with children and what they need to do with all of the “keepsakes” that come into the home on a daily basis.  Say you have a toddler who frequently draws/colors a masterpiece.  What do you do?  Maybe you have a school age child who comes home often with essays, returned test/quiz papers, award certificates, and numerous other paper based “keepsakes.”  What do you do? 

I decided to see if I could discover some solutions that would preserve these without taking up space somewhere in the home.  Here are some of the solutions I came up with.

Create a website with a page devoted to each child’s life.  You could make this a private website that only a select few could see.  On it you could post pictures of their artwork, etc.  Not only is it a permanent record of your child’s life but it can be shared with anyone you choose. 

After displaying a child’s work in a prominent place for a week or so take pictures of the best of the work and at the end of the year create a few pages of their life that year for a scrapbook about them. 

Set up an account on a site like Flickr where you can display pictures.  Again, you can secure this so only those you select can see what has been placed in your folders. 

Declutter all but the most significant awards, etc.  What is left place in page protectors and then into a binder. 

While many years ago I let go of my numerous childhood keepsakes, I found that I still have some things that I really have no need to keep.  It is interesting how easy it is to let things like this build up because I have the room for it.  I plan to scan some things before decluttering it all.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter, by recycling old plastic plant pots. I recycled a few of these last week.