Sorting out yearlong list of souvenirs

The collected mementos of one’s entire young life would probably fill an aparador or a filing cabinet. We never give much thought to how we could store our children’s school papers and childhood keepsakes. We tend to simply dump all their things into a drawer or box in chronological order. But we could actually learn techniques to sort out this huge collection of souvenirs, so that by her 18th birthday, we could just hand our daughter or son his whole life.

As each of our children went to school, didn’t we experience the constant muddling through the sea of souvenirs, cards, letters, which grew like the rising tide as they pass through kindergarten, elementary school, until high school? Then we realized that there was far more than papers collected since kids save old keys, deflated party balloons and plastic angels.

There are five simple things that take care of all this debris: in/out baskets, holding file, scrapbook, treasure box, and a junk container.

In and out baskets

Most department stores sell plastic filing cabinets. Assign a drawer to each one of your kids for their in and out baskets. When the kids come home from school, they can arrange their books and school papers into their assigned drawers. If they’ve received mails or school notices or magazines during the day, it is best to have it placed in their drawers. Of course, together with the kids, we have to clean out these drawers occasionally, preferably every month. However there are also some things that have historical value — things that your children and you may want to keep forever (like cards from Grandma, photographs, etc.)

Try to keep a cross section of things so you can always remember what the period of the child’s life was really like. These can show likes and dislikes, struggles and strengths like their handmade preschool birthday card to you, drawn with an airplane or princesses drawing.

Just remember that valued keepsakes, especially drawings of your children should be labeled indicating the child’s name and the date. Likewise, we can also find pieces of wadded-up, pad paper, which may seem like junk but is actually a valued keepsake as you recognize the note you wrote “Speech Jojo gave when he ran for mayor in the fourth grade.” Won’t you feel grateful that you did not consign it to the trash can because you have spent five to ten seconds writing that sentence?

The holding file

After cleaning out the in/out baskets, you are left with a collection of keepsakes. It is best to put them in a holding file. This is just a place where they’re kept safe, sound, and out of the way, until we have a chance to put them into scrapbooks.

The holding file can be just about anything: a box filled with file folders (one for each child) or stacking letter trays. It is helpful though to have a separate container for each person. Stored in this way, the things are safe and fairly chronological. If someone wants to peruse his waiting collection or work on his scrapbook, he can just grab his things without having to sift through the whole pile. At least once a year, the holding file should be emptied out and its contents out in scrapbooks.

Sorting these collections needn’t be time consuming. Most of us dread tedious hours spent mounting pictures, filling in baby books and fussing with scrapbooks. There are easier ways that can be very effective. For example, every year put each child’s collection into a separate envelope. Identify the envelope with the child’s name and the year. Keep the envelopes filed in chronological order, and you’ll have a life story told with photographs, art work, school work, and other reminders.

The scrapbook

Each one of your kids should have a scrapbook, and over the years each book can become a cherished possession. Here is a very simple system. Use two-inch loose-leaf binders and mount everything on margin reinforced loose-leaf paper. Special keepsakes are stored with plastic sheet protectors. Use tabbed dividers to denote and separate each year.

Most of the school artwork is displayed in the house for a few weeks, then (except for rare occasions) it is thrown out. Sometimes it takes the sorry feeling away if you’ll take a picture of the child holding the piece before you throw it away. That way, you keep the memory and not the masterpiece. Photos are an especially helpful way to save some of the three-dimensional things children have to do for school: dioramas, relief maps, etc.

To simplify things a little, one father typed up a questionnaire and had his kids fill one out every year. These questionnaires have given them revealing (though not time-consuming) thumbnail sketches of their lives:

a) If you could trade places with someone else, who would it be?

b) If you could go anywhere on vacation, where would you like to go?

c) What famous person do you admire most? Why?

d) Who are your favorite movie stars, singers, and sports figures?

e) What is your favorite sport, favorite movie and favorite song?

f) What would you like to change about yourself? About the world?

g) What do you like doing in your spare time?

These questions are not only stimulating and fun for the children to answer, they are also effective and revealing for adults. It will also be surprising to note how their answers change from year to year.

Sorting photographs painlessly

Most people I know are family photograph hoarders. Stack of shoe boxes hold a mixed collection of photos of all the children and relatives. It is a basic rule to always label photographs so that you may remember the occasion and the names of everyone in the picture. Left unmarked, will that picture mean anything to you 20 years from now?

If you have a large photograph collection, you might want to start a photo-negative file, contact prints or thumbnail files in your computer. I have used these for the family, school events or travels. This makes reprinting copies for my published articles, for giveaways or enlarging photographs for framing easier.

There are many styles and types of photo albums on the market that hold all sizes of photographs. Check a few camera shops and bookstores and see what organizers are available. Although size 3R photos are normally printed in the Philippines, size 4R can be more presentable. Avoid magnetic stick on album, which would dry out eventually and hasten fading of colored photos. I find pocket insert albums more practical.

If you have a backlog of photo envelopes or boxes stuffed with pictures, all you need to do is start sorting. Most of us procrastinate about doing this because it seems so overwhelming, and we don’t have a large block of time available to work on it. Here are some tips on how to do it painlessly.

First collect all the loose photographs you can find. Go through drawers, boxes, cupboards, attics — everywhere you’ve stashed bits of your collection. Decide, first, how you are going to sort these pictures. You may classify them into family, school, out of town or business photos. Each child can also have his own album set showing his developmental years. Once you’ve finished this primary sorting job, you may have to sort each file individually by year. When that’s done, then you are ready to mount the pictures into the albums or scrapbooks.

Treasure box (aka junk container)

So, we have things in the scrapbooks, but that still leaves things like the wooden train engine Grandma gave Chris for his first Christmas, the paper mache Leah gave her mom on Mother’s Day and the painted stone paperweight Gabby gave her dad for his birthday. Of course, you’ll want to display and use some of these things. There comes a time when they’ll have to be tucked away to make room for some new things. That’s where the treasure boxes come in. You just need some kind of a covered container — a plastic storage box or a trunk. Depending on how many things you have, you might want one box for each person or an antique trunk for the collection of all the children’s souvenirs. Don’t forget to label these things. Just write a brief explanation on a piece of masking tape and stick it to the object.

I don’t have the ultimate solution, but there are a few ideas. First, children need to have a place for their things. Without a well-confined place for their “treasures,” you will have piles of papers and basketball cards on their dressers, and stacks of refuse on the floor.

Second, whatever type of container you give them for this junk, it will be more effective if it doesn’t have a lid. When the container gets full you have to throw some stuff out to make room for some new plunder. Teach them how to throw things away when they’re young. That way, they won’t grow up to be the type of people who take junk to the dump and come home with more than they took.

Don’t mess with the children’s psyches

The above methods of removing clutter do require patience and care. Often parents can get exasperated and wish they could just throw out all these childish keepsakes. I have drawn some of the above ideas from Deniece Schofield, a home management consultant lecturer in Iowa, and the mother of five children. She also the author of “Escape From the Kitchen” and “Confessions of a Happily Organized Family.” She further states that if you inflict your adult wishes on children — you could end up messing with their psyches.