Collecting mementos of our child’s life is something most parents do. But when does our collection of treasured keepsakes turn into clutter? It’s natural to want to hang onto the memories of our children by keeping all their special things, but that collection can easily become overwhelming. Now is the time to decide what you should keep and what you should toss. Here are a few ideas to help you sort through your collection:

1. Rate your keepsakes. Look through your collection and only keep the ones that make you smile, laugh and cry. The ones that really stir your heart or capture important events. Ask yourself if you really need to keep each school project or test? Maybe only keep the projects that you know your child especially loved working on. Or the fantastic school test result for a subject that your child struggled with all year.
2. Set a limit. Make a decision to only keep a set number of items for each year of your child’s life. Or maybe one memory box for each year or two.
3. Can you store it? For everything that we keep we need to ensure we can store it easily. Will it fit in the box, folder or scrapbook you are putting together? If not, maybe it’s time to let it go.
4. Ask your children. This may sound dangerous (my son would love to keep each of his drawings) but asking your children to help you sort through the keepsakes is a great lesson for them. Show them how many drawings you’ve kept and how much space that takes, then ask them to choose five to keep. If they are struggling with letting go of the rest then maybe take photos of other favourite artworks and projects and keep a digital file instead.

Sorting and purging on a regular basis will hopefully result in a collection of keepsakes that you and your children (and their children!) will treasure in the years to come.