Choose a box, of a size that you feel comfortable storing, and fill it with things you want to keep - that have meaning for you.

In my case, I found a box with the notes I passed with my friends in 9th grade. Crazy stuff. Kept it. Let go of just about everything else. Except some pottery from elementary school which, frighteningly enough, fits in with my current design sense.

That is a tough and common problem. For papers and photos, I'd consider making one or two scrapbooks and pitching the rest. Then I'd get one pretty box or storage item, maybe something that could serve a dual purpose such as an end table or ottoman with hidden storage or even one shelf in a closet, and limit the amount of stuff that you will keep based on the amount of space you're willing to set aside for mementos. Then pick your very favorites and donate the rest.

The less stuff you keep the more you can actually use and appreciate those item you do have. I went through a similar situation when my mom moved out of our house. I had two days to clean out my entire bedroom, and I got everything down to 8 smallish boxes. So I still have some sorting to do, but I probably got rid of 75% of what was there. You just can't keep everything, and you probably didn't even remember you have half the stuff.

One suggestion is go through the photos and slides and decide what you want and see if any of your other siblings want any of it and give them those.

The rest, I'd scan into a photo editor software, assuming you are reasonably adept at such things, it's time consuming but it can be done and store them digitally.

At least they can be kept and not leave a lot of clutter.

I've been scanning in the things I don't need to keep and then throwing them out. (the magazine clippings, letters, certificates of "achievement," childhood artwork)

For photos, I might put together a blurb book. That way in case something happens to the photos, you can order a new book. Or scan and store online.

I have one scrapbook of photos from my pre-adult life. Nothing else. I really don't miss having my old report cards, art projects, term papers, etc.

I'm a paper conservator and get this question a lot from friends and since I recently went through the same thing when my parents moved I *totally* get it.

First, take a look at the American Institute for Conservation site, especially the "How to Care For Your Treasures" section http://www.conservation-us.org/

Once you've thinned the herd and know what you want to keep (but don't be too harsh, you might regret throwing things out later) you can curate your own collection and organize them by time, size, or type (photos, drawings, etc.). I very strongly suggest not cutting things up for scrapbooking, instead use digitally scanned copies so you don't destroy the originals. Scrapbooks -- think dye stamps, acrylic adhesives and acidic papers -- don't last that long in the terms of grandkids and future generations.

For the most part everybody knows the drill about keeping things out of direct sunlight and away from damp environments. Keeping things in lidded containers is a good idea but storing them in archival enclosures like acid-free, pH-buffered folders and boxes is even better. Digital prints are very light-sensitive and scratch really easily so they do best in a kind of polyester enclosure called a Mylar 'L-sleeve'.

If you do a simple web search for 'archival storage' or 'archival materials' a lot of vendors that sell high-quality folders and boxes will pop up. Some of the best are Light Impressions (for photos) and Archival Suppliers/University Products (for books, documents, drawings, etc.)

Good luck!

I have the same problem, I bought my grandparents house in 2004 and I'm trying right now to organize everything into scrapbooks. My grandmother saved every card she ever received, so I have tons of cards I sent her over 30 years. I've had to sadly pitch some stuff, but if you keep the stuff that means the most, you won't need to fret over the other stuff, but organizing pics and papers into the scrapbooks is a fun easy way to keep it all nice and neat, 18 storage bins seems like way too much stuff.

It's the feelings these objects evoke when we look at them that makes them precious, but I think the reality is that these sentimental objects become cumbersome as we grow older, and frankly irrelevant when stored away in boxes where they never even see the light of day...

I'm not suggesting everything should get tossed, but
why not consider taking photos of certain objects (i.e. childhood stuffed animals, trophies, etc.), and then donating the actual physical item? I think Teddy might be much happier perpetually displayed in a cool photo then festering in a cardboard box in your mom's basement...

I recently helped my mom clean out my childhood home. My room was left exactly the same ... with all my toys and clothes. I took a picture of everything sentimental then threw them away. It hurt, but most of these things I didn't even realize I still had.

I'm going through the same problem.

My parents have kept EVERYTHING, and although some of its being put to good use due to my three year old niece (she's playing with the toys her mom and I used to play with, and she's wearing the clothes that we grew up wearing, and mind you my sister is 35 yrs old), they've just accumulated too much stuff.

I'm trying really hard to get them to throw away some stuff, but it's so hard.

When I went away to college, my parents told me to take everything I'd ever want with me. They were getting rid of the house and travelling the world. And since I was off on my own adventure, I didn't have any problem letting go of all my old stuff. It's probably much harder if your parents have kept a shrine to your childhood.

Ask yourself: how often are you really going to be looking at old things from your school days? In all the years that you have not been living at home you don't seem to have missed these items, so why hang on to all of it now?
I kept a lot of things aswell for a long time and finally went trough them when I moved a few years ago. It was a relieve to let so much stuff go and I havent missed anything so far.

Take a few days and go trough everything. If you don't want to throw away pictures another option is to scan them and keep them electronically. I like the idea about keeping one box with things you want to keep. If there are things you are unsure of, put them in a seperate box and look at them again in a month and then decide what to keep and what to give away.

I'd say try to at least keep one tote's worth and wait a year before you go through it. Then you'll be able to realize what you really love.

By the way, for those of you who are parents yourself now: do you yourself keep absolutely everything of your child's? Art projects? Report cards? It seems as if I get a folder's worth of stuff every week from my daughter's school...

I salvaged a few boxes of my grandparents photos that my mom was going to throw out after they died. When I took them, I lived in a tiny apartment with NO storage, but have not regretted it once. You can always find room for things like that. I even scanned high-resolution CDs of the "best of" photos (the ones that had been hanging on walls and such) and gave a copy to all the relatives.

Getting around to actually going through them and organizing, that's been on my to-do list for several years now... But I still don't regret it!

I'm with Lisa (Montreal) . . . my Mom took all of her early family photos and divided them into three scrapbooks, one for each of her kids. It's nice to have but I admit it rarely gets out of its cupboard. The one exception is a framed photo of a four-year old me on Santa's knee that is packed with the other Christmas decorations and comes out for a few weeks each year at yuletime. C'est tout.

PROPS to the crazy haired kids giving redrum horns to the stuffy girls in the front row

My dad just died and I am right now this week sorting through the house my parents lived in for many years. A house of many closets where nothing was ever thrown away, not even the boxes of stuff moved from other houses. Not so much toys and such here, but paper, unbelievable amounts of paper. I've been sorting through paper for at least 30 hours so far and I'm not finished. Let go of things. Also get yourself a shredder, people - don't do this to your survivors.

What do you have? For whom would you save it? Why?

I think people with kids might want to save some funny or meaningful bits of their own childhood for them -- I was charmed when I found (as a kid) a report card of my Dad's that had some interesting remarks on it from his teacher!! But have a reason to hold onto anything and keep as little as possible.

Some toys become collectible (surprisingly, often not the ones you think of) so anything in good condition you might want to investigate selling on Ebay to another nostalgia buff.

I'd suggest keeping class pictures (of yourself, not so much your classmates) and anything you were especially proud of at the time --awards, etc. (Unless like my neice, you have literally hundreds, maybe thousands, of ribbons from competitive horse riding -- they lose their meaning if they are that easy to get.)

I will say this, too: I was sorting and trashing old greeting cards one time, and sort of frisbeed one into the trash pile -- and a $20 bill floated out! It was a birthday gift from years before that must have gotten tucked between the folds of the card, and I nearly burned it! So just really examine things before trashing them: you only have to do it the once, but just occasionally there might be a hidden keeper in the mess.

I will step back in here and just say that I'm thankful my parents didn't hord everything. Stuff got purged along the way over the years and even now, Mom still finds stuff she can get rid of and she's in a much smaller place than the last house she shared w/ my Dad when he was alive over a decade ago.

All of us kids (4) have pics of family, ourselves and such to go through and do with as we see fit and it's fun to look at old photos taken years ago when one was younger as well as various furniture pieces that she could no longer keep and thus gets to stay in the family. When I moved out, I took pretty much all of my things, furniture included as it was all mine with me to my apartment and thus there was never a shrine although my room was still considered, mine when I came home for the weekend, just didn't have my things in it anymore. Today, when I go home to visit Mom, I sleep on the couch. :-)

I think when it's time to move Mom into assisted living, we won't have as much needless cruft to sort through thankfully.

Invite family and some of your close friends over. Make an informal party of looking through some of these mementos, talking about the good memories and funny stories they remind you of. It will help cement these parts of your childhood in your mind, bond with people close to you, and help you to decide the relative worth of hanging on to a (hopefully) much smaller subset of the whole.

I tried to pare our stuff down to one trunk for myself and one for my husband.

HOWEVER, when we were first engaged I took a box of his childhood graphic tees to consignment and it breaks my heart to think of all those cute tees he wore as a little boy being gone...
They would have been perfect for our nephews or (someday) our own child. They were SO cool, but I didn't connect the sentiment to them at the time. And to think, his Mom held onto them for all those years... Little league shirts, summer camp shirts....UGH! It didn't take me long to realize I had made an impulsive "purge" and regret it!

That was 4 years ago and I STILL kick myself for it. So, be careful what you part with!!!

ohmigod, that picture reminds me of my second, third and fourth grade pictures. Just that as it was in Chicago, it wasn't so white (this almost looks like the UK or a parochial school).

I would tell your mother to chuck it all, without ever looking at it. Chances are that you've lived without it this long, you can continue to do so. If it had that much sentimental value, you would already have brought it with you.

Brutal, but otherwise the odds are that you will take years to go through an entire attic full of 7 people's history.

My stepdad scanned all the kids' photos, art, report cards, articles, etc. and gave each of us a DVD of those things for Christmas last year. I love looking through it, and its less bulky and dusty than the real thing!

I saved the key stuff, but scan and dump the rest!

I like the DVD idea. I've also heard of people taking pictures of the mementos or pictures of the grown kids holding their art then put it in a scrapbook or photo album - then just chuck the junk.

I agree that my mother didn't horde things of mine during my childhood - report cards got tossed after she was done bragging, toys and clothes got passed onto cousins, etc. She did keep all the pictures though - so I have a couple albums full. I like to look at them on occasion - and I love to sit them out when I'm cooking dinner for guests so they can all have a laugh with me (like the time I begged my mom to let me get a perm when I was ten - and looked way too much like Shirley Temple).

I also don't just have pictures of me and my lifetime, I have pictures of my mother when she was my age and pictures she could then of relatives and friends. And with photos if for some reason I get sick of having the albums (I plan to hand them down to my kids so they will have pictures of their ancestors), I could scan them and burn them to a CD.

I just got back from a week of emptying out my Mom's main house that she's lived in for 45 years so we could rent it out. We spent a week donating, trashing, moving, gifting, and reminiscing over everything single thing in a four bedroom house (with a full attic). My Mom has been steadily getting rid of stuff for years and a lot of it had already been disposed of when my Dad passed away 7 years ago, but there was still vast amounts of stuff.

We had the luxury of moving a heavily scaled down collection of my parents mementos and photos into a vacation home. We sorted all (now grown-up) kid's junk into piles that each of us dealt with. We divvied up the family silver, china, crystal, photos, and furniture among the kids who then had to get it out of the house by the end of the week.

Scanning photos is useless, no one will be able to see the scans in 20 years, whereas we could open a box full of old photos, report cards, newspaper articles, wedding invites, baby announcements, childhood artwork, etc. without needing some obsolete technology. We didn't save it all, but we at least looked at it before tossing or deciding to save. We only took a few photos of things before tossing.

My roommate's advice after cleaning out her deceased parents house was "you can always throw stuff out later, you can't get it back later". I am not a big pack rat, but I'm even more inspired to sort through my own stuff and dump at least half of it.

Thank you thank you to everyone for your great suggestions, advice, and motivating thoughts! The task no longer feels impossible and I've got a clear plan now :)

I have to sigh a bit that it's been a full year since I posted this question...we are STILL working on the attic (and closets). The other problem is that my siblings can't (won't) make the time for it and/or are in denial that my parents are moving (at some point) from their childhood home. But great progress has been made and my ability to toss things has grown immensely, with many thanks to the suggestions here.

This is such a good lesson about how to let go of things throughout life so that they won't build up like this.

We threw away BAGS of broken or otherwise useless toys and bits and baubles. Poor storage meant that little could be donated. We found some gems, of course, but it was few and far between.