To Keep or Not to Keep

I've been sorting through "keepsakes" this week. How do you decide what to keep and what to pitch? I've moved 10 times in my adult life and numerous times as a child since my dad was in the Air Force. What makes one's heart treasure something when the same item doesn't hold any significance for another? I know part of the answer is that certain things remind you of a wonderful memory. It's all relative I think. So even though there are things that hold great nostalgia for me, how do I decide what I must keep and what must make the cut? Always before I thought I needed to save everything of significance to me for my daughter because it would be just as significant to her. However, as my daughter grows up and I know more about her personality, I realize that some of my things won't hold as much significance for her and I don't want to burden her with clutter. And for that matter, I don't want to be a prisoner to my clutter either. I'm thinking that one thing I may do is take pictures of things that I've saved since my childhood and write about that item and tell why it was special to me and then make a scrapbook of the collection of memories. That way I have a picture of the item and it is in a scrapbook where I can look at it more often than if it was in a box in storage. Also, once I am gone, someone else may not know the story behind why I saved that item. This is an evolving process for me, so if you have any tips on how you tame the keepsake monster I'd like to hear them. Thanks for reading!

(My Friend Mandy, above, is one of my dolls that I can't bear to part with. I got her Christmas of '77 I believe. I wanted her for soooo long and was so happy to get her. Maybe I just need to write about her though. Decisions, decisions!)