[AussieD]

What things are important to you- that you have kept over the years? Have a look at my blog http://christian.families.com/blog/w...-you-hold-onto to find out some of those things I hold onto and can't stand to throw out.

[PennySteed]

I have all of my letters from my husband from when we were dating, all of my wedding cards and cards from both boy's birth. Basically, I have kept and will continue to drag around the world with me things that remind me of my family, photos, cards, hospital bracelets. The only collection that I have been dragging around with me since I was 10 and living in England is my spoon collection. I move every couple of years, so I am forced to purge and assess what is important to me with each move.

[AussieD]

Thanks Penny for joining in. Sounds like your keepsake collection is similar to mine.Wow! moving every couple of years. I'm a hoarder and find throwing things out hard, escpecially the things that have special meaning.
Where you collect spoons, I collect owls and recently I've started a shell collection from the beach we frequent near our home.

[ProudMommy77]

Funny this came up. Being that we're moving, I'm going through all my keepsakes as well. I found letters from my cousin when we were 10 -- we used to be pen pals. I have all of them! I have birthday cards from "special" birthday years, sea shells my parents brought back from their vacations, etc. I just can't part with it, so it's coming to the new house with us!

[purelegance]

i've kept everything from the first year of DH& I dating, then all the little important things (special dates, etc). i kept all of izzy's hospital bracelets. but if there was a fire, i would grab (besides obviously DH, DD & dog) would be my dad's hat. he died when i was 16 and that's a highly important thing to me.

[AussieD]

Thanks ladies for sharing your precious keepsakes with us.I can undertand not wanting to part with letters from when you were 10and other childhood keepsakes. When I was a teenager and young married I threw out a lot of stuff from my childhood. Now I wish I could get it back.
I can imagine how precious that hat is of your Dad's. We have something in common. I was 16 when my Dad died too.

[robokiss]

I still have my baby blanket. :3

[mcmama]

Selling a house will really make you look at your keepsakes. I tend to keep too much.

But I have everyone elses keepsakes too. I have jewelry from my great grandmother. Photos of ancestors that go back 120 years. And I have keepsakes that my aunt kept of my cousin who died when she was 15. It is weird to be the one who keeps my cousin's baby stuff, but I cannot bring myself to toss it.

I have my aunt's WWII letters to her mom, detailing daily life in the Army Nurse Corps. I have her medals, her bars, her photos of the 242nd hospital in Sissone, and her 82nd airborne patches.

I have pictures of people from the 1920s who look like they are having a great time and I don't know who they are.

I have a very large bullet which is a souvenir of the week in 1970 that my uncle was held hostage on a Swissair jet at Dawson Field in Jordan. A machinist, he decided to do a little occupational therapy when he was released, and tried to turn it into a cigarette lighter. It did not work. It is the strangest contraption.

I'm beyond scrapbooking. I need a museum.

[AussieD]

Wow Janet. What a lot of wonderful treasures you have. No wonder you can't bear to part with them.

[mcmama]

Except for the wartime stuff, they wouldn't be valuable to anyone but me.

But the weird thing is having pictures and pictures of people I can't identify and memoribilia that was obviously cherished by someone and I don't know the significance.

It says I'm the survivor. I've outlived a lot of people. Guess these are my "immunity idols"!!! (Don't know if you have the "survivor" TV show in Australia)