Postcrossing revisited

I am a hoarder. Having 2 children and limited space for knick knacks and memorabilia is controlling my urges somewhat but when I was still living with my mum I basically saved anything that had even a slightly sentimental meaning for me.

This meant that when a couple of years ago my mum moved out of what had been my family home since the age of 9, I had a lot of sorting and clearing to do. A lot. I thought it had all been done, but still when I visit her now, the odd bag or 2 can still be produced for me to sort out! Last time it was a bag full of photo albums (a very cobwebby, dead spidery bag) and this time a box of postcards. There must have been at least 100 there spanning the period between high school and that start of my relationship with Leigh at the end of university.

It has been very interesting and exciting to go back and read a lot of those old cards and to remember the people I was in touch with and what was going on in my life at those times. Some of them speak very much of my age at that time, let us say!!!

There were also a large number of blank cards in the box, ones I had bought on holidays or trips, acquired in shops just because I liked them and I think there are a good few from the Showcase cinema in Nottingham too. So I was wondering what to do with the blank cards (most of them are still in good condition as I thoughtfully stored them in photo albums...) and this reminded me that one of my friends has been Postcrossing recently.

I took up Postcrossing shortly after Zachary was born in 2008, but left it alone after 7 or 8 months because it was getting a bit unmanageable. But I have reactivated my account and plan to see how many of the old postcards I can use.

So of the box of postcards, some I will be Postcrossing with, some I will still be keeping because I really can't bring myself to throw them away just yet and the rest I have no idea what to do with! I am going to scan in some of the more interesting stamps for my Flickr account (although if I then get rid of the cards, I'm starting to wonder why I need to keep a picture of the stamp...still it's not taking up physical room in my house!), but then have a pile of cards.

If I were more arty, there's probably some wonderful collage I could make from them, but I've got other crafty irons in the fire at the moment. I did see that one of my Postcrossing sendees collects stamps so I'm hoping I might be able to offload them on him for his stamp collection - or there might be someone else on Postcrossing who would just like the cards. I don't think there's anything too personal on them....!!