Sentimentality -what items do you keep?

Also. Have just got decorator to paint over height chart we did in kitchen. Took a photo. And decided it had to go...

shizam that’s sad!

DH says if we ever leave here we will have to hack the plaster off of the wall with the height markings on them. At the moment though, it is still being used GS has grown 4 inches in the last 6 months and now pats me on the head......

I have taken photos though, when we redecorated we painted around it, so it’s looking a bit grubby, well after 16 years it would be!

A box filled with a treatment diary I wrote when my son was being treated for Leukaemia and precious things from his time in hospital as the treatment was unsuccessful and he died .

The birth cards/tags for him and his sisters. A first dress each that the girls wore. A small china dish that my mother gave me.

Cards from my children and friends, some of whom are now dead. A set of cups and saucers and a pair of earings that my daughter bought me with her first “ own money”.

Old photos and all my qualification diplomas/degrees .

I have down sized massively when I moved house so had to let some stuff go but couldn’t throw everything out. It’s up to my children what they do with them as I won’t be here but I have asked them not to throw heir brothers things out

I have my children's first shoes and other items from when they were small. Also i keep my mum's last handbag and everything she had in it, if i open it, even ten years later it still smells of her.

I downsized 21 years ago, and from that day I have resisted the temptation to save sentimental items. However, when the GCs were toddler,s I couldn't bring myself to clean the fingerprints off the bottom of my french windows until ages after they had visited. Now that they are more or less grown up I keep the design or message that they leave on my sequinned cushion until the next time.

Far too much despite saying that I am not sentimental! A friend has passed to me a collection of letters written by me to her when she was at boarding school. As I am four years older, these make fascinating reading as a snapshot of being young in London doing my first job and living a very busy life on very little money. I have kept them so that if she is interested DGD1 can meet the young me and know that I wasn’t always an old lady. They detail my first meetings with her grandfather, our courtship and the run up to the wedding at which the recipient of the letters was chief bridesmaid, as well as early married life and the birth of DD and DS.

i keep photographs and a few items like cards from my daughters childhood.a few ornaments.......got my mums old coins pre-war.but as you get older you dont want all this clutter...am getting everything put on disc,so that the photos dont ever fade.

unfortunately i "lost" a lot of my treasured items many years ago at the time of my divorce. i do still have a highland doll my dad bought for my mum, it was one of the last things he ever bought as she died less than a year later. my daughter has no such sentementality so most of my stuff will end up in the bin!

We’re a sentimental lot aren’t we? Perhaps our AC will get to be more sentimental as they age.

I have a small (about 3" x 3") knitted square that was the first piece of knitting my daughter did. My better half has a tape that his dad made - it was a recording of his grandad discussing everything from his wartime job ("went to join the navy and travel the world - got a job on the river Thames"), to married life, his poverty-stricken childhood, the trainers he was given as a 70th birthday present (and "walked to the beach every day as that's what trainers are for") etc - he listens to it every few years or so and is one of the few sentimental things he cherishes. I recently shredded a few decades worth of my old diaries as part of my de-cluttering and next have to tackle a few big boxes of photos not in albums - as I can't even remember some of the people in them I'm hoping to end up with just a small box after filling the few small new albums and few pages left in existing ones. Also on my hit list is a drawer full of various cards and letters that are purely sentimental and no use or interest to anyone so most, if not all, will have to go.

My children's birth name tags.
A child's 'magic' glove worn by one of them.
A gold paper crown from a cracker.
A carved wooden necklace from a child.
A small gol***
Joshua tree seeds.
A million pounds or more would not induce me to part with any of these.
All their cards letters/notes to me.

shysal
Love it, the idea and the cushion. ,??

I don’t have clutter or barely any ornaments in my house, but I have kept boxes and boxes of sentimental letters, paperwork, objects, clothes - and I quite often go through a box, shed a few tears, and put it all back again. I have attached a label to most things so that when my children eventually sift through my things they will know why, for example, a cracked old plate has been kept, and then can decide for themselves whether to keep or throw away.

An old plastic lettuce shaker from a dear old village ironmongers that is long closed.

A funny little tiny brass urn that I found in an old stone wall.

My son's old teddy now without his legs .

A small white elephant from a gypsy fortune teller who was remarkably prescient and did not expect any money for her throwaway advice.