What Do You Collect?

What was the first thing you collected? How old were you? There must be something in us that drives us to collect. I'm not a psychologist so I don't know what that is, but I am fascinated by it. I've had many collections over the years and they all have different meanings to me.

I'm fascinated by collections. My Oma collects Santas and cardinals. My Grammy collects hedgehogs, cardinals, and butterflies. At one point she collected tea pots. My Granddad collected genealogy stuff and my Dad used to collect Dr. Pepper paraphernalia. As you can see, collecting is a well-loved pastime in my family and I love looking at and even using the things that have been gathered through the years.

The earliest things I remember collecting are erasers. I had a friend and pen pal who would send me fun erasers that she found. Eventually I started adding to that the little stickers and tattoos that would come with my Valentine's cards. These were small and I don't know that I was consciously thinking of collecting but that's what was happening.

The first thing I remember deciding to collect are postcards. Not ones sent to me but I will buy a postcard from a place that I visit as my souvenir. It's a great option for a souvenir because they are cheap and don't take up a lot of space! I keep them in a photo album.

I have mini-collections of things that I like and I sort of collect Detroit Tigers stuff and red pandas but my biggest collection by far is books. So. Many. Books!!! I have almost the entire Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden series and then dozens if not hundreds more. My whole family loves books and we have shelves upon shelves full of them.

Collecting stuff is fun and great and I've realized that I collect even more things than I ever thought but the greatest collection is memories. At the end of the day, our collections of things represent the collection of our memories and our memories are what last. Things can break or get lost but our memories are always with us. People don't often think of photos as a collection, but some of my most prized possessions are photo albums, scrapbooks, and other photographic memorabilia. My time and money into preserving memories in physical form are well worth it and I hope it's worth it to you too. Make the photo book. Buy the wall print. Print your pictures out and have them in physical form. While you might wonder why you ever collected tobacco tins (my Granddad did), you'll never regret collecting memories or the photos that represent them.

I'd love to know what things you collected as a child or even now as an adult! Or does your family collect something all together? Let me know in the comments.