As I child I collected stickers. It was all the rage and children spent a lot of recess time trading back and forth.

“One shiny for that scratch and sniff?”

“How many for that fuzzy?”

To say the least, it was a good learning experience in trading commodity. To say the most, it was fun.

We moved at some point and unfortunately while my books were in storage they disappeared. Talk about heartbreak. There was a lot of time and dollars invested in my collection.

When my dad died, I discoverd he had scads of mundane things collecting in his house. There were drawers and drawers filled with shopping bags neatly folded into squares. There was a LARGE ziploc full of twist ties. And a shopping bag full of neatly wrapped coils of all different kinds and lengths of string!

You might think he was a bit neurotic (I thought so), but I soon realized it was because he grew up poor and was taught to “waste not, want not”. He never preached at me, just went about his business and tucked away all the things he thought he might need.

I’ve been fortunate enough thus far in my life that I can’t imagine having to save a piece of string. Can you? Something to think about, isn’t it?

Besides all the ordinary things in his house, I found lots of interesting things, too, including a collection of buttons. It was tucked away underneath an ancient treadle sewing machine in a candy tin.

Somedays I pull it out and thumb through the buttons. There’s not anything fancy or flashy in that tin, just good serviceable buttons that would get the job done.

Kind of like my dad.

Did you have a collection as a child? Do you have one now? Are you particular about saving certain items?