I got an e-mail yesterday from Leah. She was wondering how I organize keepsakes and souvenirs. I also had that question a while back and kind of forgot about it (sorry...) and then remembered the other day and then Leahs e-mail arrived in my in-box... so long overdue, this is how we do it.
Photos are organised like this so I won't get in to that Leah's not a big scrapbooker and I'm not either but I do make a simple travel scrapbook for Wille. I'll do a separate post on that later and most of the so called travel souvenirs go in there. I prefer other types of souvenirs for myself...
I don't have a super solution for the rest of the stuff one tends to hold on to. I'm not a very sentimental person and have very few issues about getting rid of stuff. I have probably tossed a few to many things when it comes to memorabilia but I have hung on to some.
The stuff I toss is photos, letters, post cards and holiday cards from people I no longer have any relationship with. It sounds harsh but why hold on to the wedding photo, holiday family snap and odd post card from a former collegue one will not get in touch with again? There's no room in my memory box for that. Sorry.
I keep what matters to me. Martins letters from when we met (we were in diferent towns and sent each other mail every day for a year), letters from my mum and dad from when I was abroad in my teens (nice to have dad's handwriting now that he's gone), letters from friends I do want to stay in touch with or get in touch with again. I bunch the letters up with elastic ribbons to separate them. I've kept a few little things from when I was in Kindergarten and there are a few keepsakes like the caketopper from when we got married and the champagne cork from our first anniversary.
There are also a few things Wille has made for me but Wille has a few boxes with his own stuff and most of the things he has made are in there. I do try to keep them to a minimum but also I don't want to get rid of too much because I want that to be his decision when he gets older. He's got two boxes with memories, one box of school stuff he might (or might not) enjoy later. I got rid of all of my old school stuff in my twenties. Read some old essays I'd written and that kind of thing and then tossed it all. What a relief! There are also two boxes with Wille's art. He was extremely productive when he was younger and two boxes is probably less than 1/10 of everything he drew and created :)
Martin has a similar box to mine and him being much more sentimental than I am has more old letters and postcards from relatives than I do. My letters to him in 1988 are also in there. Martin tends to want to save much more than I do and has a couple of binders with news paper clippings and odds and ends like pin-up playing cards...
The boxes I'm talking about are Kassett from IKEA. For these memory boxes I use the the fairly large size and they are about 28 cm x 35 cm / 11" x 14". A good size for storing bigger and smaller things together. I store the boxes on top shelves in our closets where we can get to them but they are out of the way in our day o day lives.
Like I said it's nothing revolutionary. It's just boxes but it works for us.
