31. Savor Childhood Memories
All good parents want to savor the precious moments of their children's lives, but everyone does this to varying degrees. If you are the type of parent who saves every birthday card, every toy car, and every cicada shell your child ever picked up, you're going to have a problem. By the time that child is fifteen you won't have room for all of his memorabilia. And, quite frankly, you may have some yucky stuff hiding in boxes! If you save everything when your child is young, then when you hand the responsibility over, he may go one of two ways, either he will want to save everything, or he'll want to save nothing. The solution lies in finding a happy medium.
One of the first calls I received when I was starting out as a new professional organizer was from one of my neighbors who wanted me to organize her husband's belongings. She told me that he had so much old stuff from his childhood that it was cluttering up their bedroom and home office. Apparently his mother had saved everything from his childhood and then passed it on to him when he got married. At one point in the conversation my neighbor said, “I mean, he still has his teeth!” Her husband was only about forty years old, so I thought this was an odd statement. I would hope he still had all his teeth at that age. “No,” she said, “I mean he still has all his baby teeth in a box!” This was just one of the odd things that his mother had saved for him.
The way to keep your child's memorabilia under control is to save a reasonable amount, keep it all in one place, and then look at it every year to decide again what is really worth saving.
You have to be reasonable about what you keep. It's often said that the key to organizing is making decisions. I completely agree with this statement and have seen it demonstrated with many of my clients. The people with the most clutter and the most “old stuff” can't seem to make a decision and let go of the past. When it comes to savoring your children's lives with little pictures and tokens of their stages of growth, it's best to do it on a year-by-year basis. Think of it as finding the “best of” that year. Chose the best, toss the rest, and move on! There's so much more ahead.
Another key point to consider is to only save what gives you happy memories. Believe it or not, there are people who save mementos of unhappy occasions. I have seen people save bloody blankets from when their dog was hit by a car, newspaper clippings of national tragedies and obituaries, teeth that they lost as children, and pieces of casts from broken arms. And I have to think, Why? Why would you want to be reminded of something sad, tragic, or unpleasant? I guess it's a matter of opinion and preference, but I would like to think that if you are saving things for your child to have when he gets older, you would want only the happy memories to be preserved. So when considering what to keep for your child, ask yourself and your child, “Does this bring a smile to your face?”
If you've already accumulated lots of memorabilia for your child, you'll have to gather it all into one room first to get it under control and organized. If you have more than one child, work on one child's memorabilia at a time. It's a great excuse to have some one-on-one time together.
Allot a few hours for this process because you may get lost in reminiscing, and that's OK! If you don't think you'll get through it all, make sure you have an area set aside where you can leave the stuff until you do finish your project.
I suggest using my tried-and-true process of CPR (Categorize, Purge, and Rearrange. See Chapters 20 and 25). Your categories might be: photos, artwork, baby blankets and clothes, baby photo albums or scrapbooks, trophies and awards, religious articles, schoolwork, and stuffed animals, just to name a few. Of course your personal categories will depend on the age of your child and how much you have saved thus far. As you categorize, ask your child, “Do you want to save this?” If the child says no, you've got to honor that. You can also decide if something is necessary to save just by your child's reaction. If there are lots of “oohs” and “aahs,” and “I remember this,” you probably want to keep it. If you get a “What is that?” it's probably a toss.
As parents who are trying to hand off some responsibility to your children, you can't force your child to save everything, but you can make suggestions. You also have to let him make some decisions, too. So if your ten-year-old had a lousy experience on a soccer team, there's no reason why you have to save the team picture. Now there are going to be items that you find adorable and your child will find meaningless, I guarantee it. For those items, make a separate pile for yourself. Those items are now yours to store and not your child's.
Toys and clothes are two categories where I see many parents saving way too much. Let's face it, if your child is a teenager and you still have his stuffed animals, every toddler toy, and every piece of clothing he wore in his first year, you've got some paring down to do. Save the special clothes like a christening outfit or the outfit he wore home from the hospital. Save a special stuffed animal, toy, or book that he loved. The rest could be given to charity.
Once you have made all your decisions about what to keep, toss, and donate, take a look at your piles. Papers, artwork, and awards can be kept in a folder, portfolio, or accordion file, and loose photos can be put in an album (see Chapter 32 on photos). If you are someone who likes to do scrapbooks, then small and flat items may be used for that. Look at the size of your collection as it is spread out on the floor in piles, and think about a nice container in which your child could keep his memories. Some options are: plastic containers with locking lids, steamer trunks, or wooden hope chests. Remember, too, that this will be a collection you will add to every year, so get a container with extra space. When choosing where to store your memory box, consider how many years it took to fill one box and plan for up to eighteen years. For instance, if you fit three years' of memories in one box, then you will need six boxes by the time your child is an adult. Of course, at some point you will not be the keeper of items, it will be your child's decision, so he may decide to keep more or less than you did.
Once you have rearranged your child's memories into a nice container, you will need to establish a process to keep up with all the new stuff that is going to come into your home from this point forward. I suggest finding a box, a drawer, or an accordion file in which you can store these items for one year. One of my children uses a drawer in his desk to store memorabilia; my other son has a drawer in his dresser; and my daughter has an accordion file on her bookshelf. Throughout the year we toss extra pictures, award certificates, playbills, buttons, and special greeting cards in the memory drawer or file. In the summer, we go through that drawer to categorize and purge and find a home for everything. Most flat items end up in their scrapbooks. We cut pictures from the greeting cards to decorate the pages and toss any cards we don't use. The bigger items get put in the memory boxes, which are stored in the bottom of their bedroom closets. At the beginning of the school year, they each have an empty drawer or file to fill up again. At the end of the school year, it's time to go through and weed out.
Accordion File. An accordion file is a great place to store memorabilia accumulated during the school year.
Establish a routine of going through your child's memory box with him every year. This routine is a great way to keep down the clutter and to limit the decisions you'll need to make in the future. Throughout the year you only have to decide what to put in the memory collection spot. It's not a final commitment. Once a year you decide what goes into a scrapbook, photo album, or memory box. As you are putting in the new stuff, it's a great time to look at the old. You may find some cute things that make you laugh, cry, or smile along with your child. Sometimes you will find old things that have lost their significance so you can let those go. It's amazing what a few years will do. The child's memory box will then be refreshed.