Underwear Drawer

When I was a school counselor I used to have the opportunity to give a year-end 'lecture' to those of my students who were going off to college - of the 'stay safe, stay healthy, respect yourself and develop good habits' variety.  One of the things I suggested is that they keep papers, documents and other important things in their underwear drawer - because no matter where you go, how many times you move, or how much or how little space you have, you'll probably aways have a drawer (or equivalent) for your underwear.  I don't know how many of them followed this advice, but I always have!

So tonight I decided it was really time to clean mine out - something I don't do very often - since  it seemed like I was running out of room in it.  And I'm glad I did.  I found some real treasures. 

I found mother's day cards from my son with wonderful notes written inside.  I found Maddie's 'adoption' papers from the Humane Society.  And notebooks from Todd's 6th grade class when his teacher had all her students write weekly 'progress' notes to their parents and the parents write encouraging notes back to them - all year long.  There were 'cat angel' pins from Mark and Alaska Marine Highway pins from my first ferry trip to Alaska.  Mark's old passport with a wonderful picture of him from years ago was an especially nice find.  Todd's original vaccination record and baby growth charts nearly brought tears, and so did the piece of yellow wrapping paper (carefully folded) we'd had taped to the bathroom wall to put stickers on for each 'potty-training' success.  My 'key to the world' pin from high school commemorating a 'straight-A' semester was in a little box, along with a 'Ready Kilowatt' pin from my stint as a customer service rep with Tucson Gas & Electric in the 70s.  There was a walrus pin and and lizard pin as well - origin unremembered.  (Some things are bound to be!)  Of course there were old credit cards (from the days before shredders?) and lots of envelopes of 'extra buttons' from long forgotten new clothes, and some receipts for purchases I didn't even look through.  (I wonder why they ended up there?) 

And all the way at the bottom, a collection of diaper pins, from when I had a baby to pin diapers on.  Little yellow duckie ones.  So sweet.  I'm so glad I still have them.

I put it all carefully back in the drawer - still don't have a lot of room for actual underwear.  But that's OK - the important stuff is there!