Michelle. You lost me at “one [tote] for each.” I bow to your efficiency! You are a natural-born curator. I’d give you a trophy, but it would only become one more thing that needs a place to live.

True, Bob, and as we change, so does the message of memory we want to share with future generations. We also can’t control what our kids will remember and/or what they will consider important. Events in our children’s lives that seem so very important to us may turn out to be a footnote to them.

Kristina, I agree that certain objects are prime for digital storage. And, yes, knowing that keepsakes are stored somewhere else makes it easier to part with the object itself. But for me, the same problem might still exist, because in my mind, the internet itself feels cluttered. How do you find what you want to see? Would my stuff simply become a virtual heap instead of a physical one? Plus, so many mementos require touch. Beyond all this, though, even the historian in me recognizes that subsequent generations will be/are far more cyberspace-oriented, and this could be their perfect solution.

Logical consistency on this one is for the faint of heart.

*Neither of us quite there yet, but (I observe a little indelicately) it’s coming–cf. Ballard’s ‘The Garden of Time’: the story, not its recent dumb Met Gala travesty . . .

Nowadays, with digital photos being so easy to take and cheap to store, we’ve parted with a lot of things by taking a picture and making it just that much easier to surrender the physical thing.

(Don’t ask me how likely it is anyone will find those photos again or even look at them….)