<p>I just visited the shrine. The Oscar Wilde action figure…the Axis of Evil finger puppets!!!</p>
<p>My S made it easy for us. In his SR year of HS, we were shopping for futons. He had us replace his bed with a futon & frame. It makes a very nice guest room. He put all his “stuff” in the closet and removed most things from the walls. It is very neat. D’s room isn’t nearly as neat but has slowly had a lot moved to the closet as well. Hopefully, she will help discard some next time she’s home, as she’s graduating from college this spring–we hope.</p>
<p>I asked my son if I could toss the chess trophies and he was fine with it. I’m having trouble with all the books though! I love them too. I’d really like to get rid of the bunk beds, but the truth is that when family visits all the beds in the house get filled.</p>
<p>We never changed anything while they were still in college. They could, but we didn’t. After college is a different story.</p>
<p>S graduated and moved back home. Finally forced him to get rid of stuff and turn it into an adult room. He is very sentamental and tends to want to keep everything. But it was difficult. It’s still not 100%, but better. Got rid of Monsterface and most action figures!</p>
<p>D1 came home after graduation and cleaned out her room. Said she didn’t want anything she left behind. I have been getting rid of stuff (donating 15 years of dance costumes to our local community theater for instance) and turning the room into the guest room. Interestingly, D1 has asked me to send her some stuff she left. But I had already gotten rid of it. Oh well! </p>
<p>D2 is a senior. Will wait to see what she does, but I am itching to get rid of a lot of her junk. Hoping she is more like sister than brother—but she has always been halfway between the two extremes. Her room is basically as it was when she left for college. I’m getting vibes that she is more like bro. I hope not!</p>
<p>No matter the child, I want to get rid of their clutter. But, there is nostalgia attached to that clutter and that makes it difficult for me. Not lying.</p>
<p>When DD was in seventh grade, we redecorated her room. She picked the most sophisticated designs and fabric patterns and I remember joking that it would make a nice guest room…and it does. The fabric is getting a bit worn in places; otherwise, we would not need to redecorate at all.</p>
<p>I make a point of keeping my son’s room intact. Crap all over the floor and all. He has told me it’s a comfort to him, and at this point I have the luxury of allowing it.</p>
<p>One of my sons still has his beanie babies…also has lots of model planes, ships and weaponry.</p>
<p>I took all the nameplates (with team name,date,etc) off the trophies. I put each one in the kids’ photo albums underneath a pic of the team/kid in uniform. Then I threw all the trophies in the trash.</p>
<p>My parents talked about repurposing my room when I first moved on campus but ultimately didn’t end up touching anything, they just hung out in there once in a while to use my TV-- it was clean but only halfway to being a grown-up room. Which was nice, since I was home every break and for about four months after I graduated.</p>
<p>Now that I’ve graduated and moved out for good, I’ve been slowly taking stuff out every couple weeks and moving it to my new place. My boyfriend is buying a house in a year and I’ll be taking everything then and handing the room over to my parents. Until then they’re content to let me use it as storage. We don’t do overnight guests or anything and already have an office, so they don’t seem concerned. By now I’m ready to throw stuff out and have gotten rid of almost everything I would get rid of, but I do have nice furniture I’d like to keep for when we have the house and a spare room to put it in.</p>
<p>I’m sorry but an almost adultmholding onto beenie babies? Why not donate them? There are amazing places that use them to help traumatized kids. </p>
<p>My daughters would think any college kid holding onto his toys well, is kind of odd. Tell him it’s not a turn on.</p>
<p>Due to a combination of moving several times from K-12, family not having much money for anything beyond bare necessities, and mom’s annoying tendency to give away stuff she felt “I didn’t need anymore” without checking in with me first, I didn’t really have much of a “kid’s shrine” even while I was a kid. </p>
<p>While I still have a bedroom to go to when visiting, it resembles more of a home office with a bed and not much else. </p>
<p>Heck, my current bedroom resembles more of a kid’s shrine considering my collection of model fighter planes, Transformers/Macross figures, and a collection of electric guitars and amps. And I make it a point to fully enjoy them when I have the chance. </p>
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<p>That’s pretty close-minded…especially considering how this is such a YMMV thing depending on the individual. </p>
<p>I know plenty of adults well into middle age who not only keep stuffed animals/toys in their rooms/homes, but also in their offices. I’ve worked with senior executives and lawyers who had model fighter planes, Transformers figures, stuffed animals…including beanie babies, and more. </p>
<p>In fact…the case which stands out most in my mind is a visit to one late 20something female biglaw attorney whose office is practically a wall-to-wall Barbie/Ken doll shrine.</p>
<p>I have my deceased Mom’s paper dolls that my sisters and I played with for years. I don’t expect anyone to be *turned on * by them but it’s a harmless pleasure for me. I gave away my Barbie/Ken/Midge/Skipper collection when I went to college because I thought some little kid might enjoy it. I would never get rid of anything my son might value without asking him.</p>
<p>I would take down the excess “stuff”, put it in a box with the child’s name on it and stick it (or them) in the closet. Let the child figure out what he wants to do with it once he gets his own place.</p>
<p>SteveMA’s suggestion is my general system of managing all the junk that my loved ones seem unable to get rid of voluntarily. I regularly throw out the obvious garbage, give away the stuff that clearly has no sentimental value, and box up the rest. After a couple of years spent boxed up and out of sight, the kids have an easier time deciding what has actual sentimental value and what can go. Sometimes they need that distance to gain clarity. </p>
<p>I try not to just get rid of other people’s stuff that has any possible sentimental value. God forbid I should just dump the Bobba Fett full helmet or the box of beloved Matchbox cars, or summarily decide which Beanie Babies have meaning and which don’t.</p>
<p>^…or monetary value! I guess I watch too much Antiques Roadshow. Things I will not touch are S’s baseball and basketball card collections and Star Wars toys which includes 1970’s hand me downs from a cousin.</p>
<p>ETA: MIL tossed DH’s card collection while he was away at college. He was upset to say the least.</p>
<p>It’s not that he’s attached to the beanie babies, it’s that he’s never cleaned his bookcase where they sit…which would probably be the greater turn-off than a glimpse into what the younger version of S cherished!</p>
<p>My parents tossed a lot of my stuff over the course of various moves. I will not do that to my kids. They can go through it when they are ready.</p>
<p>mathmom,
How could you throw out the chess trophies??? I think for DS those will be among the last childhood clutter to go. Now the soccer trophies that he got for showing up (except for the first one he got in K, which he was very proud of) are long gone–he never wanted to display those in the first place.</p>
<p>But he’ll be home a few days in a couple of weeks, so we may be able to make a dent in it. Maybe replace the loft bed we bought when he was 2 with a futon or fold out sofa.</p>
<p>Sorry if it seems close minded, but that’s how many young women feel. Keeping childhood keepsakes in adult apartments is a turn off. A few momentos, sure, but oodles, </p>
<p>And I find grown men with lots of toys a turn off. If its in a den on one shelf, okay, but in an office, its like look at my hobbies!!!</p>
<p>If an adult keeps trophies from high school it looks as if they had nothing more recent to replace it with, like from a vacation and life hasn’t moved on.</p>
<p>It’s a me thing I suppose. My daughter moved in with her bf, he put up all his sports posters. D and bf went shoppong and found more mature artwork. He loves the more grown up feel of framed pictures, etc. The posters are delegated to the entrance hall and d made a collage of them. </p>
<p>I don’t know, maybe I enjoy the adults they are now then holding onto the kids they once were. My oldest daughters apartment is very chic and the only thing from her childhood are pictured of family and our dogs. She prefers collecting intersting antiques then trophies and ribbons.</p>
<p>Different strokes for different folks…you have to decide how sentimental your family it. </p>
<p>There are some things that I have pitched during major cleaning sessions that I really wish I would have held on to. They don’t necessarily have to be placed on display, but I kind of get a kick out of going through old boxes of goodies and photos. I personally LOVE great memories, and love hearing my dd see something from the past and start talking about it.</p>
<p>I have a friend that things there is no reason to hold on to old trophies, but then it occured to me that her son never really earned any, so what did she know 
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<p>The only young women I know who fit that description are a tiny group of Ivy grad/professional school students I encountered a few years back who were so excessively serious and lacking in any humor about anything that most of their fellow grad classmates…including many more other young women perceived them as “stuck up”, “stick in the mud”, and “killjoys” to be avoided as much as possible. </p>
<p>Personally, I find people who keep their childhood keepsakes into adulthood and aren’t obsessed about conforming to some rigid notions of “being a mature adult” to not only be better socialized/adjusted, but also better able to handle the storms of life…especially when everything seems to go south…whether in the workplace or in other aspects of their lives because they are more able to adjust/adapt due to their greater open-mindedness. </p>
<p>One older post-college roommate had a saying that one important aspect of being a mature adult is to know how to keep a fine balance between being a complete immature buffoon and being too rigidly serious/lacking any humor depending on the venue and the situational context. Either extreme is to him…a sign the individual concerned is “immature”.</p>
<p>Considering how well it has served us in our post-college lives…I’ve tried to live up to that saying on a daily basis. </p>
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<p>This sounds similar to the overly wrought formulaic tale middle-aged male friends/co-workers would commonly relate to me and other young males privately as a reason to avoid any long-term relationships…because in their view…the males end up being forced to give up most/all autonomy to the GF/wife in the relationship. </p>
<p>What’s so common about these tales is the narrators being unhappy with the loss of autonomy due to the domineering gf/wife…whether real, imagined, or somewhere in between and the all too common human tendency to employ all-or-nothing thinking in situations where reasoned compromise is necessary…such as relationships.</p>