I'll take my chances on the off chance that my child will see their primary 2 report card scan after many years and say "oh my god I can't believe it..."
My mom kept everything like that. The structured stuff like baby books and photo albums with labels and stories are great. The boxes of report cards from when I was 7 were a momentary amusement before they were recycled. The school work and random other things were just annoying to have to sort through.
My parents sent me a giant box of these things when they downsized the family home. On the one hand, it was really validating to have the proof that things really had been as bad as I remembered them. On the other, it was really sad to have confirmation that things really were as bad as I remembered them.
Ultimately it gave me the chance to be for my inner child what my parents never were, but man there was a lot of pain in that process.
I would have been stoked to see the evidence of her sentimentality if that was my mother (my dad kept my stuff and I liked that very much). I guess we are all different people will different emotional reactions. Also I know nothing about you or your life so maybe your reaction is totally warranted.
What you fail to understand is that the vast majority of non-hoarders are still happy to get those "brief moments" of joy, memory, nostalgia -- connections to the past that could otherwise be totally gone. The cost is so low, the benefits -- perhaps not life-changing, but of a particular and hard-to-replicate quality that I think makes them worth it nevertheless.
For most people a reasonable amount of childhood memories doesn't cost that much to store (i.e. its taking up space you are paying for anyway) so why deny your grown up children the potential for enjoying them just because they might not care.
I also don't think your implication that only a small subset of people ("hoarders") will enjoy such collections is correct. Most people can become sentimental even if that's not their day to day modus operandi.
I would enjoy a digital hoard of stuff like that, but not a physical hoard. I have since digitized all of the stuff my parents hoarded and got rid of a lot of the physical items.
It doesn't really cost me anything on an ongoing basis to have this huge digital dump of files sitting around. It was a one time effort to scan everything. If my parents had done that and just left a huge archive of digital files, that would be fine.
If people feel neutrally about digital hoards, that makes sense.
It is amazing how things can be interpreted that differently. How heartless you have to be to not even spare a kind thought about the moments she lovingly put away the things for her loved child. If the person is a hoarder, they will do that for each and everything, not just for things that remind one of the memories of the loved ones.
If it were me, I would indeed think “oh my god I can't believe it”, followed immediately by “why did my parents save this worthless junk? I have no interest in this. How much more garbage is in here? I’m definitely not going to look through it all to find two important things buried in hundreds of trivialities. And now I have to go through the trouble of throwing it away myself. I’d rather be doing anything else”.
Maybe your kids will enjoy it, though. But that feeling is far from universal.
> If it were me, I would indeed think “oh my god I can't believe it”, followed immediately by “why did my parents save this worthless junk? I have no interest in this. How much more garbage is in here? I’m definitely not going to look through it all to find two important things buried in hundreds of trivialities. And now I have to go through the trouble of throwing it away myself. I’d rather be doing anything else”.
Sure, we are all different people. I was super happy to find my childhood class photo and marksheets that my dad had saved - it just underlined what I already knew, that he cared. I shared it with my children and we bonded over the exams where I didn't fare well.
> But that feeling is far from universal.
I know that the level of sentimentality isn't a universal thing.
I'm not going to hold them to cherishing this stuff and ask them to explain themselves if they just delete it. I just want them to have a chance at looking at small parts of their childhood. It is done without expecting gratitude or reciprocal emotions in return, which I guess, is part of being a parent.
Ok, but so what? It doesn't cost much to store and isn't really that much effort to throw away later if the kid doesn't want it anymore. No reason to deny the potential to relieve some memories just because there is a chance they won't care.
