Topic: People/Family stories
I am so unorganized, and such a procrastinator, it is really a problem for me. When I can't get motivated to get something done, but it is important enough for me to keep, I stow it.
I started stowing my childrens' keepsakes long ago, when my oldest (who is 18) was in kindergarten. She brought home the cutest, dearest things.....handprints, essays with pictures, polaroid photos on special days, awards, and crafts. My refrigerator door was overloaded with cute stuff. I had a pile of things on my dresser that stayed there for a year or more, not knowing what to do with it. One day, I decided I would just take a paper grocery sack and load all of the cute stuff I couldn't throw away into it and keep it on my closet shelf. Then each time she or one of the other girls (who eventually had their own sacks) would bring home something dear or cute or historical in some way to their small lives, I would slip it into the sack. These sacks are folded, as to not take up so much space. Keeping them folded also protects these cute artifacts from dust...mostly. So at the end of my closet shelf, through 2 moves so far, there sits the sacks.
We take them down once in a while to wander through them. I did this the other day. I actually found the sacks in a box that had not yet been unpacked from our recent move and I took them to my closet. But before I put them up there, I had to go through them. I actually was just going to go through Emma's sack, because I have LOST her immunization records and she needs them to go to high school this Fall. (I did not find them and I am hoping this will not be too much of a problem....????) So I went through Emma's sack. Her little blankie (the 'gee gee') was in there and she saw it and carried it around the rest of the day. I found it once again back in the sack at the end of the day....she said it didn't smell the same anymore. lol
I don't know what I will do with the sacks once they are grown and I don't have cute things to put in there anymore. I have never done anything with these things....no scrapbook, no pretty box or preservation of any kind. But the sacks have become a sort of artifact in themselves and we like them now just the way they are.....brittle as they may be.
I do a similar thing with recipes that I collect from magazines and friends. I have an accordian file folder that I neatly labeled one day....one amazingly organizational day....but I don't always have time to file the recipes. So I slip the recipes that are new into a pocket in the back of the accordian file and keep them there, waiting to be filed...which I do about once a year.
Both of these stow away ideas keep me from having piles of things everywhere. And I know right where to find all the recipes I've cut out over the year, instead of losing them.
Simple, but it Works for me.
