apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

For well over a decade, every few months I round up all the detritus that is magnetized onto the fridge (postcards, my daughter's drawings, school notices, shop receipts, newspaper clippings, cartoons, photos, ETC...) and place them into a large manila envelope marked with the month and year. The envelopes go into a cavernous drawer where they are out of sight until I feel nostaglic for, say, MAY 1994 -- and I open up the envelope and memories come pouring out.

when we renovated our brownstone, we found the following in the fireplaces which were sealed: books dating back to 1821, various coins: mercury dimes, pennies from 1900, coins from Poland, bottles dating back to the early 1900's and a set of skeleton keys. it is a tradition with carpenters to leave artifacts behind walls, fireplaces to be found by the homeowner years later. we love that we have a piece of history in our home.
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when we were redoing our kitchen and had to remove our drywall we find empty beer bottles and whiskey in bottles.

when I was little, my brother and I found an old poker box in the rafters of the basement. it was full of poker chips and some cash! turns out, our basement had once been used as a gambling hall and speakeasy...when they were raided, they hid the contraband up in the rafters. it was a pretty rad find...

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When I was a kid, I briefly lived in an 100-year-old house in Wisconsin - there was a space between the attic floor and the bedroom ceiling that could be reached from the pull-down stairs, and I hid a map in it, detailing the location of the time capsule I'd buried in the backyard. I have no memory of what went into the capsule though, other than a letter.

When we were younger my sister and I drew and wrote all sorts of things onto the concrete floors in our basement. Our basement is finished now and I wonder if the next person who moves there will rip that carpet out and if they do they will find a lot of childhood memories my sister and I shared.