Treasure your memories with a memory box

In our home there is a very special box.

It’s a large chest made of Silky Oak and over 60 years ago, it was a young girl’s Glory Box. The young girl was my maternal grandmother and her 4 brothers handcrafted the box for her. For her sweet sixteenth family and friends endowed her with gifts of linen, doilies, tatting, napkins and cutlery – in readiness for the day she off and got married.

I digress (sorry). The point is that we now have the box at home and we’re creating our own special memories with it. My children call it the Memory Box.

On purpose it’s well within reach. In fact, it’s our coffee table. So lifting the lid and exploring the contents is easy.

Our memory box is our own version of the attic or the basement. A place where we store snippets of lives racing by so that at any time we can revisit, recall and rejoice.

Inside our memory box you’ll find ultrasounds, baby cards, first locks of hair, 4 tiny pairs of shoes, a plaster cast of a tiny foot, the one dummy that somehow managed to escape the dummy fairy, a selection of each child’s most memorable outfits, a few first drawings and a random assortment of collectibles.

It doesn’t matter what goes in – it’s just about creating a spot where we can either sit as a family and remember (or I can sit on my own and bawl my eyes out for the children that are growing way too fast).

I love that my children respect the contents of our memory box above all else. It seems that a peace settles over them as they lift the lid and they are enthralled as they look at photos together and recall memories in accordance with the item they are looking at.

If you don’t have a memory box, I urge you to start one today. You could devote a cardboard box per child, a plastic storage container … whatever. As long as it becomes the resting place for all things special that will allow you to spend quiet time remembering.

Do you have a tradition of saving special treasures in a special place? What precious memory just popped into your head as you read this?

118 Comments

- - beckyjco said
  - 28 May 2013
    1:27 pm
What a beautiful idea. Thanks for the great read.

- - premmiemum said
  - 27 May 2013
    8:07 pm
Memory boxes are just amazing. I have one I mean its only plastic box with lid at the moment but it has our most precious things inside

- - tobysmummy said
  - 27 May 2013
    2:29 pm
I have a little box that I keep my sons things in (his coming home from hospital suit, 1st birthday cards, hospital card, even my pregnancy tests!). We never sit and look through it though….

- - tobysmummy said
  - 27 May 2013
    2:28 pm
What an absolutely beautiful idea!

- - katelt said
  - 27 May 2013
    1:55 pm
Great idea! I have similar as I live in a bushfire prone area so mine is safe and sound in storage – I don’t have the one box though, but lots of shoe boxes!

- - kiraaj said
  - 27 May 2013
    1:20 am
what a fantastic idea! think i might have to do one of these!

- - mal_005 said
  - 20 May 2013
    1:00 pm
What a great idea I have my grandmothers glory box it is empty at moment I may need turn it into a memory box

- - sallty said
  - 20 May 2013
    9:30 am
What a great idea. I’m not very good with things like this but it would be pretty easy to do. Just got to find a nice box now!

- - smiles said
  - 19 May 2013
    10:12 pm
I found a baby diary for my kids that had pockets in them that you could put special items in which I will keep until they are older.

- - mouse said
  - 15 May 2013
    7:41 am
I wish i had a memory box other than my brain. Most baby things are in a cupboard all together and it is hard to remember whos is whos.

- - tanya goulding said
  - 13 May 2013
    9:01 pm
I have lots of things put away but all in different places, I must put them all together! I recently have made a scrapbook for my daughter and she loves it. She helped me decorate it. It has her first baby photo, her baby hair, and photos of her play group, it has photos of all her bday’s so far, this is more personal than a photo album and I can see how much already my daughter treasures it!!

- - teetee said
  - 12 May 2013
    7:04 pm
Memory boxes are wonderful.

- - hopefullyheidi said
  - 11 May 2013
    3:48 pm
we have made a memory box

- - smiles said
  - 10 May 2013
    1:33 pm
What a great idea to have it on the coffee table so all can look at the memories.

- - mouse said
  - 09 May 2013
    1:35 pm
I think they are just perfect I had one once but well things happen and it went missing

- - curlytops said
  - 30 Apr 2013
    11:40 pm
RACHKAP what a fantastic idea to do a time capsule. It would be so much fun to open it in say 20 or 30 years. it has got me thinking I should do one with the kids.

- - rachkap said
  - 30 Apr 2013
    10:24 pm
My husband and I put together a time capsule just before the year 2000! We still haven’t opened it and can’t decide when to open it. Neither of us can even remember what we put in it! Ha, Ha!

- - kefry said
  - 30 Apr 2013
    12:08 pm
I have one for my twins ( a joint one) but I want to do a memory box for each of them

- - chicken83 said
  - 29 Apr 2013
    3:47 pm
Each of my kids have a memory box. Whilst at the moment they all have an emptied nappy box full of memories, one day it will be in a proper wooden box and given to them to remember themselves but also so they can share it with their kids in many many years to come.

- - mrs harkness said
  - 26 Apr 2013
    8:57 pm
Made a new memory box today for my soon to arrive 11 year old daughter. Thank you to the courts of Victoria they have finally seen sense.