Saving Every Little Thing

This post was inspired by a post I came across earlier today, from a mum, er, mom in Australia. I love how the Internet has enabled those of us with hit-or-miss chunks of time to share common experiences at the times we have available, yet it’s still able to be interactive and timely. Anyway this started out as a comment on her blog post and I ended up saying so much that I cut it short and thought I’d muse longer in my own space.

I save most of DuckyBoy’s artwork and his school papers. I even try to keep the homework in order, though it does pile up haphazardly.

Most schoolwork I keep in a drawer. Last year for the preschool stuff and so far this year, I've managed to fit everything in one dedicated drawer. At the end of the school year last year I went through and got rid of a few duplicates, transferred the rest to a box and put it who-knows-where.

I want to keep almost everything, even the handwriting exercises from school, so I have a record of where he was at this point. Those of us with a child on the autism spectrum get a little freakish about tracking progress (one mom I know even puts everything in a 3-ring binder; I only wish I were THAT dedicated).

Once DB can really write all his letters, I won't be so in love with the preliminaries anymore and can toss them then... maybe. Or maybe I’ll let him decide once he’s old enough that I can keep all the boxes in HIS closet. Meanwhile, he seems to enjoy looking back through the homework to see what he’s learned.

I've dedicated a whole wall to artwork I can tell he's proud of. Occasionally I take something down to make room for a new favorite; by then there's usually something old enough that I can stand to say goodbye (only as it goes into the drawer, not discarded, mind you).

And I've got a couple of favorites I want to frame, like the homage to Joan Miro they did in art class. In kindergarten! Wild. And the one I scanned and put on DuckyBoy’s blog. I wish I had the technical enthusiasm to do more of that. But even if I scanned everything, as someone suggested to the Aussie mum, I’d still never throw out the original! Especially after I deemed it scan-worthy, it must be archived properly!

I do sneak the lesser-loved pieces into the recycling bin by folding and burying them ... things like drawings on the back of a diner placemat, and other things he scribbles while trying to occupy himself somewhere. Generally I let them lay around for a week or so first until we're all tired of the pile.

We have issues with saving things larger than paper, too. It pained me to get rid of "the clubhouse," which started life as the gigantic box that our 65-inch flatscreen TV came in. We had a blast with that for a long time, even moving it from one room to another when it got in the way. It lasted through multiple playdates, even a party. We turned it on its side for awhile and it became an indoor lemonade stand.

But, after a couple of months, it was just … in the way. I got tired of the compromises I had to make to keep it – like not being able to get at DuckyBoy’s bookshelves. Not only were we limited in which books we could reach, uh read, but also I couldn’t put any away of the ones we did finagle out.

And as for the craft projects—well, let’s just say I have 2 Mars rovers and one moon rover I don’t dare get rid of. Because, God forbid we read or see something about a moon rover and our model made from a broken plastic car, tin foil, a straw, and a cupcake liner is no longer accessible! It would be a disaster of Biblical proportions! At least, I think so. The best-case scenario would be that we’d have to immediately make another one. So I might as well keep this one.

We also have a felt octopus and a toothpick-prickly sea urchin. The octopus is from a Cheerios recipe book, but thankfully we never got around to putting the O’s in place, so I don’t mind it sitting around.

DuckyBoy was on a kick for, like, 6 weeks, where he was bringing home a craft book every week from school. I thought we were gonna have to move to a bigger place!! Fortunately he didn’t insist on making every project, and we didn’t even have to do one from each book after a couple of weeks, but it was still a sweat for me. Which I really, really didn’t want to let show, because I love that he likes to make things from found objects, and I’d bet he picked up on my enthusiasm for the first craft book and wanted that to continue.

He especially loves the Crafts for Kids Who Are Wild About... series, which I see on Amazon is about 10 years old and also, I might add, aimed at grades 2-5. I’m sure he also enjoyed that Mommy had to read it to him!

He also loves to make things from the 2 bins of materials—from foam trays to coffee tins to cardboard tubes—that I keep “just in case.” In fact, the other day he wanted to make a marble run, so I went to get the (expensive, I might add) heirloom-quality wooden marble run set from the closet. But no, he said, he really wanted to make one from “the stuff,” which means I have to fashion a Rube-Goldberg creation that never really gives us much marble action (a fact which is lost on him).

*Sigh.* Can I love this in him and grow weary of it at the same time?