Sabrina Darnowsky

One of my post-retirement To Do tasks has been to winnow all the items in our basement. We have boxes that we have moved from house to house to house without even remembering their contents. (It turns out that writing Basement on the side of a box is not helpful.) One of these days, we may need to downsize, and I’d rather we make thoughtful decisions about the disposition of the odds and ends of our lives at our leisure rather than in a rush. And as I go through this process, I’ve thought about why we keep the things we do.

Some things we keep for ourselves. Over the years I have held onto the original packaging for various items that have found their way into our current household, figuring that they might come in handy for the next move. Happily, I had no problem recycling the boxes for items that we no longer own—I’m not quite that far gone! I even took the bold step of recycling most of the boxes for items that we continue to own, as I suspect that, when the next move comes, we’re unlikely to scour the basement for a given item’s box and then struggle to figure out exactly how it fit into its original Styrofoam cocoon.

Some things we keep for others. It was with fond memories that I rediscovered the baby blanket that I crocheted for my son, the translucent crescent moon nightlight that shone through the darkness of his room, and the jack-in-the box lamp stand that stood on his dresser. I had kept all these things, and more, for the offspring that I imagined he would have. However, my son and his wife have decided not to have children, and therefore have no need for these keepsakes. I like to think that they will now brighten the eyes of some young mother shopping at Goodwill.

And some things we keep for posterity. I am incredibly grateful that the nineteenth-century Quakers whose lives I’m researching so often kept their correspondence, now safely tucked away in various archives. Their unguarded words to one another provide extremely valuable insights into their perspectives, their character, their day-to-day lives, their culture, and their moment in history.

Am I keeping anything of my own for posterity? Not much in the way of a paper trail, although I wonder if future historians will someday wander through online blogs or emails that may live on some server somewhere, and experience the same joy that I do when I read old Quaker correspondence. Only posterity will know!