My Granny has always saved stamps.
Not in a discerning collecting and meticulously organizing sort of way but more of a snipping out and stashing in an old cigar box way. And, as far as I know, no one in my family has been a stamp collector.
Until Clara.
Clara collects everything – including stamps.
Clara, being a rambunctious eight year old is also not a discerning collector or a meticulous organizer of her stamps. But she does like adding to her collection. Granny has three giant manila envelopes stuffed with stamps and she’s been slowly doling them out to Clara.
It’s a stamp saver and stamp collector’s dream come true.
Except.
Except this totally justifies the keeping of things for just in case.
Farming runs on both sides of my family and you don’t just get rid of things that might be useful again one day when you are running a farm.
Ever.
This was a lesson that well and easily ingrained in me. I don’t really need the hey-look-I’m-so-glad-I-kept-these encouragement Granny and Clara’s stamp collecting has accidentally given me.
But now I’m doubly certain that I better keep saving those random springs I find, and of course the extra screws they send when you put something together, and flower pots, and fabric scraps, and keys, and jars…
Someday, someone (maybe even me), is going to be so glad I did!
Behind the Willows 
🙂
One of my mum’s relatives was known for having a jar marked, “bits of string too short to use” and another one for teapot lids (for long broken teapots).
I’m think screws and flowerpots are infinitely more save-worthy than string remnants, but I’m not sure where stamps come on the list/ranking..
Love it, Jessie. Clara and I are related!
We don’t live in a time of infinite resources, and doubly true when your girls will become adults, so yes the collecting of ‘things’ is a habit we need to encourage. (which is separate from ‘hording’ as an obsession)
[…] Stamp Collecting – Behind The Willows […]
I was so disappointed as a child when I found out that my dad had collected stamps, but had given them away! My sister and me were collecting stamps. I can totally imagine how much joy it brings to give the stamps to Clara, and for her to receive them 🙂
I’m also part of the you-never-know-when-you-might-need-it squad 🙂
I long to collect stamps again. I used to collect stamps and coins as a child. I was never concerned with the resale value but more about the beauty of the pictures on the stamps or finding unusual designs on coins. I think if I do collect anything now in the future, it will be vintage postcards. I like the idea of organic things that digital itself can’t compete with or replace and things that are also small enough that I can collect lots of them without taking up too much space. If you do decide to hoard stuff for the future then I hope it will be with things that have plenty of usefulness, with a place for everything and everything having its place 🙂
Every time I finish a container, my mother says “You should keep that.” When I ask why, she says “You could use that for something.”
My whole childhood was like that. These days, I do not believe that and I get rid of these things unless she can tell me a clear use for them.
As for stamps, those are worth collecting.
It’s funny where we all draw the lines. I have family that will keep anything potentially “useful” but kick to the curb anything like stamps or sentimental stuff and others that are just opposite of that! 🙂