I kept mine. So did my mom, and my dad. My dad’s was interesting to me. He was in high school in the early 1940s, and his freshman year book had pictures of the Red Cross Club. Next year was the various drives, and who from faculty and staff had enlisted. Then students. Then the ”in memoriam” pages.

My yearbooks have the Ecology Club’s first meetings. At least my grandkids will know we were already working for the planet in 1970.

Too many things to list here 😄

I am a very sentimental person, also very crafty and creative, so many, many bits and bobs spark my attention and imagination.

One type of thing I've collected are rocks from my travels - some rather large too. I caused some amusement for TSA @ LAX when they discovered a stone about the size of a baby's head in my carry on bag 😏

Most recently, I saved a number of artifacts from the antique furniture that was ruined when our family homes flooded, like a wood lion's paw leg from an antique sofa, a wood finial and glass doors from a secretary that was in my mom's bedroom. It was such a shame, that one, because the top was just fine, only the bottom was ruined, and we couldn't separate the pieces.

carolb, I’m so sorry that you lost so much in those floods. If you still have access to your mother’s secretary, do you think you could saw it to separate the top from the ruined lower section?

I have all my and my husband's yearbooks. My college ones were small compared to his Penn State ones. I have all the baby cards sent to my mother when I was born and all the ones sent to me when mine were born. I have snippets of blonde locks from both kids and some baby teeth. My daughter is not sentimental so she'll probably toss everything.

Well the posts on here are starting to make me feel less neurotic… L O L. I also had saved a piece of my younger sons umbilical cord for a long time. It may still be kicking around someplace. In the same box with the baby teeth and the cat bone. 😂To answer your question, yes I built a funeral Pyre and toasted her on it. It worked pretty well but I would never do it again. She was a very special cat and I had her for 18 years, she was my first for a baby. I have saved numerous odd little things that my children made for me when they were very young. And I also have very decrepit cat toys. these go back many years. Usually I’d bury a cats favourite toy with them in the garden…but these have been saved and passed along.

Fur baby…correction of “for a baby”

My high school yearbooks are one of the things that my sister threw away. My mother had kept them for me until she died, and then my sister got rid of them.

^^^ Smack her for me.

I have my yearbooks, and DHs. And while I am not the saver my mother was, I do have some things no one would understand why they were here or even what they were if they came across them.

My dear aunt used to make kitchen scrubbies out of netting. I have the last one she gave me, never used, in a drawer in my nightstand. I have the last pair of socks DH's grandmother made him. He is very particular about appropriate socks and did not wear those she made and certainly not the bright turquoise I have tucked away. He has the last wallet his father carried too and it was way past due to be replaced when he lost him and he brought that home.

I have my wedding bouquet, unrecognizable as having been yellow and white roses. Someone decoupaged my wedding invitation onto a piece of stained wood and gave me that. I've never displayed it but I do have it.

When my dad became ill in the early 60's, he had just begun restoring an old charter fishing boat into a family live-aboard vacation boat. It had been registered as a '6-pack' meaning coast guard approved for 6 passengers not counting crew. I have the brass bell ( a coast guard requirement) he'd taken off the front and polished. I keep thinking I should hang it someplace, like my patio, but its really loud and afraid DH's friends might ring it when eating and having cocktails on my patio. I doubt my neighbors might enjoy it.

My mother was the ultimate saver. I burned boxes of vintage grocery receipts, decades of checkbook registers when helping her to downsize into senior living. Receipts for antiques she'd tired of and sold or otherwise gotten rid of years earlier. A list keeper, I found her list of expenses from my wedding. It is laughable (and yes, I have it now), DH and i had paid for more than half - our cash contributions noted. She had listed things like the mints for the reception book table, a tie and socks she'd bought my little brother who walked me down the aisle and his haircut! It was a $3 haircut. 😊

Lars - I'll smack your sister for you! I can't imagine one of my sisters throwing away my yearbooks (and I have mine from elementary school through college!)

Lars , your sister is like my father who threw out everything of mine when I left home without asking. Luckily I had taken all my yearbooks with me which I still have.

A couple of years ago I finally tossed a shrunken apple head doll in a red calico with yellow rick rack trimmed prairie dress that a kindergarten friend's mom gave me. Her body was made of pipe cleaners so she was posable, and she sat on a bookshelf until I was in high school, then was packed away for decades. It was 53 years old and originally looked something like the photo I attached, only mine was black due to age. Sadly, that friend was hit by a train and died shortly after kindergarten; his foot got stuck on the tracks and the train didn't stop.

Until just last month, I had some cat teeth that had been removed 15 years ago from our cat. I tossed the teeth in the woods.

Umbilicals. I didn't save his, but I cried over our DS's cord when it fell off. It was the only tie to his brave birth mother.

Crazy stuff…my mother’s small black ballet slippers, she was born in1923.

A white rectangular luggage looking purse from 1960, I think I was in 7th grade.

^^ morz8 - the decoupaged wedding invitation!! Someone did that for ours, too! No idea where it might be after 57 years, lol. (Still saving the husband, tho...)

And I do have the original copper engraved plate that was used to print our wedding invites. Does anyone do that anymore??

I don’t know if this is crazy or not, but I’ve saved the dog tags from most of my dogs over the years. They’re not in one place, but scattered around in junk drawers and jewellery boxes. (tags not dogs) Here are a few:

eta after my father passed away, I found a Sucret’s tin full of baby teeth in his sock drawer. I’m assuming they were mine and my three sister’s.

Alas petalique, all the ruined furniture was hauled away from the curb long ago now. There was just so much that was destroyed, it was about all we could do to just haul it all out and pile it all up in time for the city & FEMA contractors to collect it.

Honestly, the whole thing - both hurricanes - made me much less remorseful about letting go of things - not less regretful, but much more philosophical.

On the brighter side, all my rocks survived 🙂

Found a photo of Mom's secretary - I think the doors are pretty.

I do wish I'd saved the drawer pulls - there were so many on various pieces of furniture I would've liked to keep. I did remove one or 2 from other pieces as mementos.We had to use a crowbar and a hammer to get at the contents of drawers because they swelled so much.

Arrow marks the waterline

Oh my! what a shame, but I understand why rescuing things so damaged in that storm and soggy aftermath was incredibly exhausting and challenging. You had limited time and tools and there was so much to do. You did well, carolb. And you saved your sanity by accepting your limitations during such trauma and chaos.

I’m glad that you got to rescue your rocks. Remind me to show you some heavy balsalt stream rocks with fossils I brought back from Colombia. So very heavy and everyone must have thought me nuts (they kept quiet).

What a sin on the flooding damage! 😞I have a very similar secretary but it’s actually in two pieces.

Rocks…right. Guilty as charged…😝

Somewhere, maybe in a jewelry box, we have one of my kids’ umbilical cord. Pops up unexpectedly from time to time.

I saved some of my dogs' puppy teeth. I don't know why. I mean, I really love my dogs and who doesn't love a puppy - but I am not sure what my thought process was in terms of saving puppy teeth. I discovered them years later in an old prescription bottle and threw them away.

Rocks are awesome, and absolutely do not count as crazy to save. :-)

Love - a crazy old lady who has plenty of neat rocks scattered all around her home.

Carol, i have that exact same secretary desk. They are pretty common around here. I had it outside, under a carport, to refinish it and it rained that night. The top half got wet and the wood pieces on the door were ruined. I only use the bottom half now.

Oh that's sad, dedtired!

Apologies for being OT: there were actually 2 secretaries at the house, and a big hutch as well. The floodwater was salty and everything STANK so bad, especially since we couldn't get in there for a week or so, and it took some time before we could get to all of it. We were fairly fortunate, all things considered - I saw accounts of people in some areas who couldn't get back to their flooded houses for over a month.

P.S. Anyone else familiar with the movie The Long, Long Trailer? In it, Lucille Ball collects rocks from every state in their travels for her future rock garden, and of course hilarity ensues 😀

I had to clean out my Mom’s apartment. She had already downsized from the house….. it was an enormous task.

I don’t want my kids to have to do this… I kept some stuff my Mom kept….. I can’t throw it away….

I have wedding gifts that are taking up precious closet space. Crystal. I’ve never taken them out of the box! It’s going to be 34 years.

I have my sister’s ponytail!!!

My Mom had kept it. My sister would just toss it I know. When I think about my Mom putting that into a little box…

What should I do? 🤣 I am laughing out loud at this

These crazy things, when I come across them do bring back happy thoughts…

I love this thread! Hats off to whoever the original OP was that started this. 👋😘

My mom died 30 years ago. When I was in my mid-40s. She was only in her 60s. I still have an old pyjama top that I took from her house when we cleaned it out. She lived in Maine and I’m here in Nova Scotia so I couldn’t bring too many things back but this secretary desk was one of them…. it was my childhood desk and she had painted it and kept it in her home. Some of the odd sentimental things I have mentioned here are kept in the top part of that desk. which is in my art studio. The wedding flowers I mentioned are in there… Lucky rock that my dad found on the beach in Nice France. He kept it for years in his car. A little wrapped secret gift which my younger son gave me and I have no idea what’s in it. And another similar box from my older son. The hospital wrist band from when I was in the hospital at his birth…

For the furniture lost in the flooding… What hurricane was that and where?

It seems to me that the gift contains some thing like love or a hug or something where you don’t need to open the gift you just leave it wrapped.

liasch -- I am the originator of this thread -- so glad you (and many others!) are enjoying it! As am I, reading all the posts.

Those little unopened gift boxes from your sons strikes a happy/sad memory for me. In 1978, DH was sent by the USAF to Okinawa for 18 months unaccompanied by us (required & official TDY). The boys were 4 and 7. Fortunately, we were able to remain where we had been living, and just half an hour from my parents, and the boys kept their familiar surrounding/people.

When DH came home at Christmas after the first six months, both boys had made gifts for him, which he kept for years. Younger DS put kisses into a little box. Older DS made a papier mache airplane, all wobbly but recognizable.

As I said, DH kept these for years, UNTIL, I (the idiot), tossed out the crumbling airplane one day. OH, the horror of DH's reaction!! But nothing could be done to rectify my evil deed, and yes, I have regretted it ever since. Mea culpa in the extreme...

DH still has the little box of kisses. So sweet! Younger son is now 51. This may be why I am so unable to throw so much away... =)

Some of these comments remind me of more I saved. I recently found my long brown hair braid . And I have a tiny crocheted dress that my mother made and wore. So tiny. This one is weird. When I was executor of an aunt's estate, I found one of her mother's ( my grandmother's) blue printed house dress and I have that hanging on a wardrobe upstairs. She was very tall and thin ... almost 6 feet tall and this housedress is from the 30s. I have a photograph of her wearing it.

The Apple doll reminded me that I have a doll that I made when I was about 10 years old. I was very much into doll making when I was young.Sewed the body myself from a pattern that I found from a book in the library and I carved her head out of ivory soap. (If you can believe that) and made her hair out of a nylon stocking and painted her face on.

Why?? I was enamoured with a fictional story I had read about a Parisian fashion doll (they were an actual thing in the 1800s) and so I made myself a replica fashion doll. Years later, when I moved to Nova Scotia I found a real antique fashion doll trunk… and oddly enough, years later, my mother found the book that I got the whole idea from, in the remainder sale at a library clear out, so I have the original book that enchanted me, as well. I still have this doll and all the clothes that I made for her when I was 10 years old. Through the decade of my teens I would occasionally design a costume for her. The real question here is…what am I supposed to do with this?

My sons won’t want it! Neither will my two grandsons. In the story, the little girl finds a trunk with the old-fashioned doll in it in the attic of the house that she has moved into with her family. I have toyed with taking this kit and hiding it in here, the house someplace. (Under the eaves which are accessible in this house, even though it’s not an attic per se, there is a hatch). Certainly, my sons will just toss it into the garbage, likely, when they find it after I croak.

It’s definitely a vintage item at this point being about 65 years old. 🙄

Any bright ideas here?

Silver punch bowl, anyone? A dozen cups? (MIL wanted us to entertain in a style of yesteryear.) I'm determined to go through our attic this year, as soon as it's warm enough to be up there.

Tacky hand mirror, only thing remaining from a cheap set I won at a carnival the same day I got stuck for half an hour at the top of the Ferris wheel.

Awww…Rox… sometimes the urge to toss just takes over. I would not have my high school yearbook if my mother hadn’t rescued it out of the garbage!

Where I had tossed it, btw… couldn’t blame that on anyone else.

liasch -- With the lovely story of how this doll came to be made by you from a book you got from your childhood library, and the reason you made it, AND the trunk & clothing -- I would collect it all, write an essay about it including the connection to Parisian fashion dolls, and offer it to either your (present? or past) library as an exhibit. Or to an historical society. It's exactly the sort of thing I would find fascinating, and I'd bet that other folk would also. Your collection would be terrific with a display of dolls, too.

The library connection could enable a library to emphasize that using the actual book collections leads to wonderful life-enhancing things, especially in these days of so much electronic stuff. Real books are forever important, IMNSHO!

As to tucking your doll in an attic for a possible future discovery, I definitely would NOT do that. Ivory soap might withstand the temperature swings (or not), but damage from mice? Don't think I'd risk it.

Hurricanes Helene and Milton hit Florida on Sep. 26 and Oct. 9 respectively. We have 2 family houses in neighboring cities that were flooded by the storm surge.

I try not worry too much about what will happen to things after I pass. All my portfolios of artwork, drawings and prints were destroyed by the flooding.

And I've saved so many things someone would think were crazy - but I also think it depends on what we consider crazy. Pretty sure it's not the same for everybody.

Liasch! I think Roxanna has a wonderful idea! If I saw a collection like that at a library it would draw my attention. It would surely start a mind wondering about things which is the whole idea….

Roxanna…. ugh… I can imagine how you felt throwing out the little plane.

Carol, if I haven’t mentioned it…I feel for you. I’m sorry

When we cleared out my mom’s place, my younger daughter requested one item. A beat-up old frying pan. My mom still used that thing. My parents immigrated to Canada first. That’s where they bought it… in 1950.

My daughter hung it up 🩷

Awww…Michele, my mom had an old cast-iron frypan! Cooking stuff is so symbolic. I have her mixing bowl, an old vintage ceramic, one that she used all the time I was growing up and I’m guessing it probably came from the farm where she grew up. Wouldn’t surprise me.

…

Carol… i’m also an artist. I have a substantial portfolio of stuff going back 50 years. The big question is what I’m going to do with that. But to lose it in a flood or a fire? I can’t imagine.😞 drawings and artwork is such a part of oneself and one’s life especially overtime

…

Roxanne That’s a brilliant idea about the library… especially with the book. We also have a little railway museum here and I Heritage Village. The heritage village only takes things from the 40s so sadly they probably wouldn’t take the doll…as it’s from the 50s. You’re right the heat of the attic would probably melt the soap. As it is the head is getting somewhat fragile and yellowed I haven’t checked in on her recently, but I’ll do it so I can take a photo for this thread.

I could do up a shadowbox display for the library.

In general, I’m trying to pass along things that others might have some connection with, including my artwork. Giving it away for the most part.

Continuing the list here… Worn out stuffed animals. I have several that are totally decrepit that belonged to me as a child. Decrepit is a generous word… 🙄and then I have the ones that were beloved of my children. I joked to my younger son, (he’s in his late 30s )that I was running an old age home for stuffed animals… He said “don’t expect me to take that on after you are gone…“🤣🤣

I have an old cashmere sweater. I’m not posting a photo. I keep it because it’s small and snug enough that I can wear it under another top. I’m perpetually cold. I dress in layers from September through April. It is SO comfy and cozy. I wear it right over an undershirt. If someone saw it they would be concerned 🤪😂

Jerry Girafe has been living with us since 1971, currently in the attic, along with Snoopy and a rabbit called, yes, Rabbit. Jerry is threadbare in places and the internal supports for his long neck have given up.

When DS and DIL were shopping for their first baby, DS picked up a toy with a music box in it. The music began. DS had to explain the tears in his eyes to his puzzled wife. The toy played Jerry's song, "Around the World".

Awww… One of the stuffed animals in my “retired stuffed animals home” is a sheep that I sewed for my first born son. It has a music box in it with a pull string (which we don’t pull anymore because it’s so fragile). I totally understand about the music box. ❤️❤️

A peach scent soap my grandmother gave me when I was 16 for my face I have it in my sock drawer I can never get rid of it!

I collect old cast iron cooking pans: Griswold, O'Brien, Wagner. I use some pieces every single day. You can't kill these things.

chisue -- your comment about Jerry's long neck reminded me about the clown doll my mother made back in 1948 for me, her first-born. I still have it, and NOone will want it (perhaps he will travel with me into the afterlife someday...) as he is so weird -- extremely thin arms and legs about 2 feet long each, slender body, made out of old sheets, I think (very little $$ in those days), and his neck is SOOOO thin, that he cannot hold up his head. Pointy clown hat is integral to the whole thing. My mother named him "Neb" as it was my father's name spelled backwards (Ben), and she stenciled his face with fabric paint she had left over from her days in art school. I love him!

Another time, I may regale everyone with my Madame Alexander doll for which my mother made a wardrobe, including a silk parasol... And found a little antique wooden "trunk" to hold it (I think it originally was a small tool box, not really a trunk). THAT was some Christmas!! But as that isn't a crazy thing per the title of this thread, it doesn't belong here, does it?!