Is anyone else overly sentimental about every little momento of you little one’s childhood? I’m pretty sure in twenty years, I’m really not going to want every painting, model and ticket stub so why does it feel so difficult to bin these things. Not to mention the space it would take up if I did actually keep even half the stuff they produce.

Instead, I’ve tried to be ruthless and just keep some special bits in a way that I know I’ll appreciate in the future. Here are three ways I’m satisfying my hoarding urges.

Memory boxes:

When my girls were about six months old, I picked up these storage boxes from The Works and just started chucking stuff in. First outfits, hospital bracelets, handprints all just got dumped in there until a friend showed me a better way.

Now, I bulk buy clear zipper wallets and try and keep the boxes a lot more organised. Honestly, it did take a few hours to sort the initial mess. Now when I’ve accumulates a few items I think are worth saving, I spend ten minutes and it’s done.

Baby grow quilt:

Understandable, for some this next project might be unrealistic to make yourself. However, I really love sewing and although I’m a complete amature, it was something I really wanted to do. To set myself a limit, I decided only to use my girls’ baby grows. Although I was tempted to add in some first clothes too, I knew if I did this my quilt would never end.

To start with I ummed and arrred over whether to make two separate quilts for Jessica and Emily. Yet, as they shared clothes, it would have been tricky to decide which items went in which quilt. Also, I also realised I wanted to make it for me. Many of these items have a special memory attached. I loved the idea of having an actual keepsake of their tiny clothing rather than just bags stuffed into the loft.

Photobooks:

Luckily we live in an era where we pretty much have unlimited storage for our digital images. No longer do you need to carefully choose what to take a photo of or worry about the overflowing drawer of developed photographs. Now they can be neatly organised into folders and sit on our laptop forever.

Even though it’s great to have so many pictures of Jessica and Emily, I really wanted to create first year books for them to keep. It did take hours to scour through all the photos we’d taken, edit, upload and organise them. For me this was time well spent and only this week we had them out to coo over baby Jess and Baby Emily.

From now on, I’m just making family year books to save time. I’m always on the lookout for creative ways to keep special pieces. How do you save the memories?

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