Wear Your Memories on Your Sleeve

Or on your bed.

I appreciate cleanliness and limiting the number of things any one person has but I do see the value in collections that have intrinsic value to the owner. Collections are something that is curated, it is unique to that person in some ways, or has specific value to a person. Decide on an item that you can find almost anywhere and can represent each adventure well, even if it means you have something lying around you’ll have a piece of each adventure that you can touch. 

For me growing up, it was primarily t-shirts. I bought one everywhere my family traveled and then was pleasantly surprised when most events I attended had a t-shirt available for me to add to my collection. I have shirts from family vacations youth group events, plays I was a part of, high school shirts, as well as shirts from camp, admittedly even shirts from retail stores that I kept specifically because the images on them meant more to me over time. For a while I would wear the shirts anywhere, but as the collection got bigger I did get a little scared of getting them stained; me being a bit of a klutz and all.

That’s where the story of my shirts changes a bit, ya see, about a year ago I realized I could no longer wear a solid half of the shirts I had collected anymore. The earliest ones were child size. So my mom suggested making them into something and offered to make a quilt. So I went through over a hundred shirts and picked out 30 for the double bed size quilt. It worked about well that the shirts, for the most part, represented the start of the collection to the end of high school for me. We even used the backs to make the pillows seen in the pictures as well as t-shirt yarn I used to make pot holders, for my future home.

I got rid of a number of damaged shirts as well, or ones that didn’t represent the memory as well as the ones that made it to the quilt. The only problem is I still have over 30 t-shirts in my closet. In the future, I’ll probably cut them up and keep the squares. I have a ton of Bethel shirts from my time as a university student and since they all mostly coordinate I think I’ll ask my Mom to make a quilt of just those… later, I haven’t finished wearing them actually.

Even before t-shirts I collected pencils, and although this collection turned about to be not as cool, it takes up so little room that I’ve happy to have my little box of unique pencils still. The other collection I have is postcards. This one falls between the two because no one else really sees them but I enjoy seeing the pictures of the places I’ve visited and sometimes there’s info on the back – plus they store flat so I can feel good about the practicality of storing them.

Now I don’t really collect pencils anymore and I’m a bit more selective about the t-shirts I buy and collect, but I still remember and appreciate all the joy I’ve found in curating each of my collections. This all to also add that I do see the value in just pictures and memories as well, but there can be something valuable in touching a memory, or in my case, wearing it.