For decades, I've stored paintings, drawings, cards & stories by the kids up in our attic. This includes approximately a hundred main lesson books, which are the beautiful artifacts that parents of Waldorf students must agonize over whether to keep or toss. Main lesson books are not just mimeographed pages of multiplication problems or thin lined paper with a column of penciled spelling words. They are colorful, artful compilations of a several weeks of work, complete with titles and decorative borders, and as such, they're a little tougher to toss. For me, anyway. (Here's a link to a video showing a 3rd grade main lesson book, for the curious.)
Right now our living room looks like a Waldorf school closet threw up in it. I have pulled down boxes and bags of those paintings, drawings, comics, stories and heavy colorful main lesson books so I can go through them and winnow. Whatever I keep, I'll likely be keeping for myself, because the kids care less than I do, being unsentimental or still scarred by their education or maybe a little of both. Like so much else in this down-sizing project, it will look worse before it gets better. But I think I already feel a bit lighter, knowing all that tonnage of paper is not over my head. And I'm falling in love with my kids' creativity and sense of humor all over again as I start this process. I certainly won't keep everything. But I'll keep enough to relive their childhood now and then with little souvenirs. I am working to kick the habit, but I'm still a bit of a sucker for ephemera.
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