Cal's Memory Tubs

At some point this past spring I reorganized the toy storage room.  When I did, I brought out all of Cal and Meg's memory tubs so that we could go through them.  Meg and I sorted through hers in May before her internship began.  While we were working on Meg's memories, I started to think about Cal's six tubs still in his bedroom downstairs.  I realized that Cal probably wasn't going to come home and spend a day or two sorting through his childhood possessions.  I honestly thought that there was a good chance that he would just say, "Pitch it all!"  Thus, I decided that I would see what I could do with his memory tubs and put it on my list of projects.  

Every time that I was in the basement working on something this summer, I would look at the tubs and think to myself, "I really need to get to work on those."  The project seemed a little daunting, especially since I was doing it by myself.  Thus, they went untouched for months.  As September drew nearer, I finally told myself that I had to make Cal's memory tubs a priority.  He was having friends stay with us in 

mid-September and I had to finish them before they used his bedroom.  Therefore, I decided this week that I wouldn't start anything else until the tubs were cleaned out and organized.

In the end, the project wasn't half as much work as I thought that it would be.  I spent yesterday afternoon pulling everything out of the tubs, tossing what I knew that he would never want to keep and organizing the rest.  It was a lot of fun looking at what was important in Cal's life throughout the years - his first Mickey ears, a homemade devil costume, his Rolen Cardinals shirt, his Cubbies vest from Awana and so much more.  I was able to cut the amount of his memory tubs in half, which was my goal.  I would still need to go through a few of his school binders and pare those down, but even with those I would have plenty of room for everything.  I sent Cal a few pictures of some of his items that I just wasn't sure what I should do with - his FACS recipe binder, his St. Christopher medals, his middle school artwork, etc.  He ended up only keep a few of those and by four o'clock today, I was finished.  It felt great to be done with one more downsizing project and fun to relive some great memories.