Keeping keepsakes

A few generations ago, people weren’t as mobile. They were “from” a place, and for the most part they stayed. Their stuff stayed. If they gave away treasured items, the recipient kept them.

Of course, those things were generally of high quality or homemade, and there weren’t a lot of them.

These days, many of us are involved in the Jackson Shuffle: moving once per year, or more, when housing situations dictate. So paring down possessions becomes important in a town where space is at a premium.

But what to save, what to toss, when it comes to baby’s things?

I’m a saver, married to a tosser. So although Scott isn’t physically getting rid of baby items himself, he encourages the practice.

Perhaps just one baby scrapbook would do the trick, I thought. That would be great, if I had time to scrapbook. So instead, I bought a hand-painted wooden box and am stashing memorabilia inside.

The box contains the predictable: baby shower invitation, photographs, birth announcement, newspaper announcement, ultrasound images, hospital bracelets.
It’s also a convenient place to file her immunization record, Social Security card and savings account register.

I bought photo stamps with Desi’s picture on them, so there’s a whole sheet of stamps in the box. To add to the nostalgia, postage has increased from the 42-cent rate I used to mail her birth announcements.

I also kept a “Name that Baby” poster-size sheet of paper from a poll taken at my baby shower. Desi can see that she could just as easily have been named Ruby, Myrtle, Twanda, Wookie or Lucille.

Former Teton Valley, Idaho, resident Jen Harrison Solis said she “can’t tolerate” having lots of clutter in her house.

“I don’t think Sully will regret not having every little thing he touched or used,” Solis said. “Unless something is really special, it’s just not worth the hassle to me.”

I’ve given away, donated or sold hundreds of baby items in Desi’s first year. Even gifts from family and friends that are no longer useful get passed on.

I find baby clothing more difficult to let go of. I’m not planning another child at this point, but some of her outfits are so adorable, and filled with memories of the days she wore them, I haven’t been able to give them away. So I fling them to the top of her closet. Soon I’ll need to dig through and properly store them.

Quilter Mary Lou Weidman gave me a great idea: Sew four or five items down to a background, strung along a piece of jute like they’re hanging on a clothesline. Make it into a quilt. That way you’ve saved the clothes and created a utilitarian object so they can be on display, not boxed in an attic. Other jumpers I’m also saving to use as quilt pieces.

My parents, bless their hearts – insert Southern joke about that phrase – did a fairly lousy job of documenting my childhood, and that of my sisters. There are no bronzed booties in their attics. When people ask me if Desi looks like my baby pictures, I have to say I don’t know.

I have only one set of photos of me and my sister, Edie. We were about 3 and 4, posing in dresses in front of some Olan Mills backdrops. There are no refrigerator-quality drawings socked away, but Edie has saved an oil painting from that same era. I brushed a vaguely SpongeBob SquarePants-looking dog, and Edie painted a taller, rectangular creature with huge yellow clawlike feet. It’s titled Bananatoes, and it brightens her hallway.

Bella’s mom, Trish Henning, says she’s already running out of space in the keepsake boxes she bought for her daughter.

“By the time Bella is grown and ready to move out on her own, I fear she may need a small U-Haul for everything I’ll collect over the years.”

Erika Wells Edmiston is keeping a baby book for Jack, largely because that’s what her parents did, although she isn’t sure he’ll want to keep it.

“I sort of feel like maybe a boy won’t really care, the way a girl might, later in life,” Edmiston said. “Who knows! Let him throw stuff out when he decides later on.”

I think that’s the best strategy. Keep as many things as you want to store. When your child is old enough to appreciate her keepsakes, and your hormones have cooled, then some things can be thrown away or donated.

My friend Elizabeth Mangum still has cute smocked dresses she wore as a baby. She dressed her baby doll in them as a child, then put them away and saved them for later.

Now, three decades hence, she’s using the clothes on a baby doll for her niece.

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Features editor Johanna Love hopes that she will find time to follow through on her quilting plans. Perhaps after life stops resembling a crazy quilt.