How Do You Stop?

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Some years ago Mister Husband almost met his end courtesy of a (cloth) wardrobe collapsing with an electric guitar on top of it which could have rightly killed him (had he actually been in the room and near the wardrobe at the time.)  But I digress.

Something similar happened to me recently except it was the contents of a cupboard, avalanching down on me.  I was almost buried.  Underneath 10 year’s worth of scrapbooks.   Piled high in the storage cupboard upstairs.  

Afterwards I asked myself, how do you stop?  How do you stop collecting the bits and pieces of tat your kids bring home from school?   When do you stop collecting birthday cards and sticking them into scrapbooks? 

Do you ever?  

We celebrated a 10^th birthday last month and I have strong stirrings that I won’t catalogue another of his cards until he hits the dreaded teens.

But I’m struggling with it.   Do I really want to bin the cards that celebrate his 11^th and 12^th birthdays?  Wouldn’t that imply those birthdays aren’t important?

I feel it would.

But I have the fear that if I don’t stop now, I might not be able to.   Bearing in mind I have four kids. 

Already I have been almost concussed under the weight of 368 scrapbooks. 

That’s only so far.   What happens when I get to the 10^th birthdays of boys numbers two, three and four?

I’ll need a new cupboard!

I haven’t a single baby item left in the house.   I got rid of all baby clothes except the vest and Babygro they each wore when they were born.   The buggies were dispatched to their forever new homes some months back.

I have a cot waiting to be collected any day now.

I threw out all of the cuddly toys.  I came across four little pairs of first shoes recently and binned those too.  Not a single regret.  Not a one. 

I have locks of hair from the first haircuts.   There might be the first tooth in one of the memory boxes.  And then I grew lax at that as well.  Recently I put my hand into the pocket of a dressing gown and discovered four little pearly whites the tooth fairy had left there.    I had no idea whose they were so I flushed them.

I religiously and systematically took a photograph of each child on their birth date every month for the first year of their life and catalogued them into individual photo albums.  I wrote them all a letter on their first birthday and the first day they started Big School.

They have loads of memories both in their heads and on paper. 

But I really think it’s time I stopped collecting birthday cards in scrapbooks that no-one will ever want.