Systems for saving sentimental things

Kids' art, special memories, photographs, and more.

This started as a post about how I handle the guilt over not having made baby books for my kids (I cherish my own). It expanded to other ways to save and document your kids’ lives. Then I realized this isn’t just for parents; we all have precious moments and artifacts from our lives we want to document without necessary devoting tons of space in our homes to it.

So here in a rapid-fire list are my favorite and most sustainable (in my experience) ways to document life. I hope readers will chime in to contribute their ideas in the comments — I am sure there are some great ideas out there from our thoughtful community.

On to the ideas!

1) Email accounts for each kid at birth

This one has had surprising staying power for me. I started a Gmail account for each kid when they were born, and I email funny stories and document milestones for each kid via email. Then when the kids are grown up, the idea is you give them access to the email account.

Tactically, it’s been really helpful to have a re…