<p>Yes! I’m still miffed about my mother chucking my 1964 Barbie (yes, she was perfect…haha) and DH’s feeling the same way about his brother tossing his vintage Lionel train set during a house cleanout. Will definitely check with our son before the purge!</p>
<p>I have my sister’s 1964 Barbie, with the platnum hair. I had it on display but the cleaning lady did something to make her head fall off. </p>
<p>The old soccer “participation” trophies are in a box in the attic…but they are in such a hard to get to place, that they’ll stay as they are.</p>
<p>For any of you who have dancer or gymnast or cheerleader Ds who have not yet finished HS, let me pass on a great idea that I heard (too late to copy) from a dance mom. She selected dance costumes from teeny tiny on up and hung them on a clothes rack, and those were the backdrop for her D’s senior picture. I think that is adorable.</p>
<p>Since we keep so much, I do wonder what my kids will wish I still had. Back in the day when we were spending a fortune on wooden blocks, H remembered his mom selling theirs at a garage sale.</p>
<p>Years ago I did the “take pictures of old trophies” thing, kept the nameplates that I could remove, stored the nameplates with the baby books, and put the trophies in our Goodwill bag. I figured Goodwill could determine where they should go.</p>
<p>Now my post-grad-school D is relocating to another city, and I have told her “everything must go” – either to her new city pad (small one bedroom), or sold or donated. (Of course her baby books, programs for all school events and dance recitals, other memorabilia, etc. *is *stored in a closet of mine and is safe from being purged.) So the hard choices re culling her stuff will be hers, and she can’t blame me for what I may throw out later. </p>
<p>H and I will be retiring in a few years, and I want to declutter now, and not be left with piles of stuff to go through later. D understands and knows that if she leaves anything behind without specific approval I will be free to get rid of it.</p>
<p>I have photo albums galore on bookcase shelves in our family room and they are precious to me.</p>
<p>I guess I am confused about the baseball cards issues. I would have said, “Take your baseball cards if you want them; otherwise I will feel free to dispose of them.” Unless perhaps the baseball cards owner was still living at home when the parent made the purge? In which case I would probably have put up with it if they could be reasonably contained. </p>
<p>My D’s boyfriend has many large containers of collector’s quality comic books stored in his old room at his parents’ house and has made clear that he would want a place for them in any home he owned in the future.</p>
<p>My mother used to secretly purge part of my comic book collection, so I wouldn’t notice (in theory).</p>
<p>We have the same issue as others with participation trophies for soccer and baseball–maybe we can choose one or two to “represent” all of the rest?</p>
<p>You could check with a Children’s Hospital. I know the last marathon my husband ran, there was a donation site at the expo held the day before. They were collecting medals to donate to children dealing with life threatening conditions.</p>
<p>D1 got many medals from participating in rhythmic gymnastics–she only kept those that she got from nationals and also from international competitions. She keeps them in a box–which she stores at my house! She had many, many tee-shirts from competitions. I was ready to give them to Big Brothers and Sisters (which, in my area, comes to your house to pick-up clothing or other household items you want to donate) when a friend suggested that I use the tee-shirts to make a quilt. I found someone to do this and picked tee-shirts from competitions that were most significant to D. The quilt turned out great–D1 loved it. I gave it to her for her 22nd birthday.</p>
<p>My band medals are still in a box but they don’t take up much room. I did dismantle all the trophies that were stored under the bed! I kept one small one that meant a lot to me, but the rest I took apart and donated the wood & marble someplace for recycling into craft projects. </p>
<p>My girl scout badges are also around here somewhere. They’re such cute little embroidered things, I hate to get rid of them…</p>
<p>Every closet has trophies from the kids still. A couple really large ones from the Power of the Pen. I guess someday I’ll talk the kid into recycling them as well. I like the idea of taking a picture and then getting rid of the actual object.</p>
<p>We had TONS of soccer trophies. After getting the okay from my D, we had a garage sale…and gave one to every child that showed up!</p>
<p>Some parents wanted to kill me…others loved me! But the look on the kids faces was wonderful…many kids do not have trophies or play sports. Pay it forward.</p>