As a child I would always try to collect mementoes while on vacation, sometimes they were as simple as a shell from a beach or a paper napkin from a restaurant. I saved my birthday cards, friends' school photos and letters from relatives. They were little things to help keep the memory of my wonderful childhood alive.
In my teen years I saved movie ticket stubs, concert tickets, and love notes passed in class. In my college years I save menus, cards from boyfriends, I pressed flowers they sent, saved matchbooks from special restaurant dates and collected more movie ticket stubs. Many of these treasures went into scrap books that were piled high in my closet.
When my father passed away, and I sold the home in 2007, I spent an afternoon going through these scrap books, teary-eyed at some memories, laughing hysterically at others and enjoying every minute of walking down memory lane. And then I placed the scrap books in the recycle bin and said goodbye to many years of little treasures.
As many of you, I am spending my self-isolation time cleaning, organizing and trying to be productive.
While cleaning out the large drawer in my hope chest, I came across a bag filled with matches. So many restaurants and clubs used to have these by the door.....
.....looking thru the little collection offered me another trip down memory lane!
And then I pulled out the bag full of swizzle sticks - and oh boy, did that take me back to my college days!
The Night Clubs in Framingham and Boston, many vacations and road trips with friends, beach trips to Cape Cod, date nights and lots of restaurants....
and I even saved some from our wedding:
One thing I have learned for sure, during this time of self-isolation, is that I need to weed out a lot of these little mementoes. I think if we had cell phones back in the 70's I wouldn't have saved all of these, but would have photos of them instead!
But....I am not ready to part with these yet, so they all went back into the drawers to be saved for another walk down memory lane in the future!
Patti, I'm the same, in fact I just tossed a lot of business cards from trips, etc. I kept a few that had clever graphics layout, but not sure why. You could likely market your swizzle stick collection on eBay. Easy to mail! You know there have to be collectors out there! 🤗
ReplyDeleteThese aren't taking up much space Patti and someday a grandchild will enjoy looking at them too. It was really hard cleaning out my parent's house because they never discarded our childhood stuff. I discarded most of it but not before reliving long forgotten memories
ReplyDeleteThose things are both good sellers in the antique and vintage business. When I was cleaning out during our purge last year, I had a slew of matchboxes I got rid of, but I don't remember how! I just remember not wanting to have something that could start a fire so easily in my possession. I think I gave them to a fellow collector who was interested. I love the swizzle sticks.
ReplyDeleteI've been tackling a similar project - cleaning out the stash I have of eleventy billion duplicate wallet sized pictures from four kids growing up...I don't know why I held onto all of the smaller pics that came in those school portrait packages! I am saving all of the 3x5's and up, but there are so many pics! Eventually, they will all come together in a master family portrait album. But it is definitely a process. Oh, and I used to have tons of matchbooks! When we moved into this house 22 years ago, I tossed them all. But I went thru them one last time to revisit the past, then I was DONE.
ReplyDeleteHi Patti, I wonder how many of us have a match box and a swizzle stix collection! I don't think I will get rid of mine as they all bring back such memories, and the stix are so much fun to handle. I see some familiar ones in your photos! I have an Anthony's Pier Four from the day we told my parents we were engaged, and those little MacDonald's spoons they had to discontinue when they were being used for some kind of drug consumption (not ME of course!!). I also have a box of matches from Windows on the World. Hope you are well! Linda
ReplyDeletep.s. I see your 40th is coming this summer, just as ours is! How will we all celebrate? We were supposed to be traveling and I suspect you were also!
ReplyDeleteOh Patti, you brought back memories with this post of me finally having the courage to say goodbye to my little box of similar mementos. Saved for years and stored in back of the guest room closet taking up much needed space were shoeboxes full. After carefully going through everting I tossed most of everything that had only meaning to me. It was a good thing to do..........
ReplyDeleteI popped over from Jeanie's blog. I'm an avid collector of mementos too - postcards, souvenir spoons, fridge magnets, matches, coins, stamps, dolls of the world...
ReplyDeleteI keep on telling myself I need to declutter as one day not too far away we will want to downsize.
Our 40th wedding anniversary is also coming up in November this year. We had thought of commemorating it, but now who knows?
Keep safe :)