This is first in a series of blogs about how to preserve treasured baby and family objects without having to find a place to store them for the rest of your life! I was packing away some of Chloe’s outgrown clothes the other day and got all sentimental. I thought about how I would miss her “love” t-shirt and her crocheted sweater. She was so little. Sigh. But once I’m done in the baby-making department (not yet!), where will all those clothes go? I won’t want to keep them in the under-the-bed storage thing forever, so I set out to find ways to preserve them for memory in a space-friendly way.

Up until yesterday, we’ve been hanging Chloe’s clothes right next to Shayne’s pants, which looked very silly. So, I got into project mode and finally hung up that new closet bar I bought a year ago. Up went the clothes, and ooh ahh, look at the pretty light! We’re lucky enough to have a small window in that closet and the light was just perfect. I chose the dresses and sweaters I’ve loved most and hung them evenly on the closet. A little help from a tripod (and my 10-month old assistant chewing on my lens cap), and this closet shot was born.

Don’t have a window in your closet? Try this. Hang some clothes in the trees or on a clothesline in the afternoon sun. The prettier the light looks, the better your photograph will be. For point-and-shoot camera users, set your digital camera to “Portrait” mode (you know, on the wheel on the top of the camera, it’s the icon with a face in profile). Portrait mode will choose a wider aperture so your background will go more out of focus.

My all-time favorite newborn thing of Chloe’s is a hippy dippy shirt with “love” written on it. I think she wore it twice before it was too small, but it’s completely cute. It was the only thing I couldn’t put away yesterday (under the bed), so I got a flash of inspiration and put the shirt on her giant stuffed rabbit! Now we can both enjoy it, and if rabbit gets dirty, it’s a whole lot easier to wash the shirt than to wash rabbit.
Stay tuned for part 2: the toys…