Last weekend I spent a lot of time cleaning up my bedroom. This was a long time coming, to be honest. Most of the time I get rid of small things, like boxes, product labels, packaging material, old cables or whatever disposable items are cluttering my bedroom.
However, if Iām honest, I have a really nasty habit of keeping things that I donāt really use, including quite a bit of childhood stuff stored away inside more than a couple of shoe boxes.
Despite this, Iāve had to get rid of a lot of stuff across the couple decades Iāve been alive, some of which I regret. In some of them I donāt remember if I lost them though. I wish I still had some of these, but thereās not much I can do nowadays to correct that, other than a blog post writing about it!
I still haveā¦
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A phone-sized box filled with Hot Wheels - I played with them a lot during my childhood. I was actually one of the kids who kind of took care of them pretty well, but no matter what the windshields would get scratched, because itās plastic, and plastic gets scratched. Some of those cars are almost 20 years old, and thatās crazy to me.
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A Game Boy Advance SP - And of course, my beloved PSP! Both of them gifted by the same friend! It still boots and everything, but I play on my Anbernic handheld nowadways so it doesnāt make a lot of sense to use it, maybe if I modded it I could at least use it to relearn my soldering and electronics skills. I got this one around 2011, good times.
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A few of my plushies - Some of these are older than my siblings! I still remember all of them and how I made them fight each other like Dragon Ball characters for some reason. Theyāre all in pretty good shape, all things considered, some of them I have no memory of how they got to me, theyāve been there forever.
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A cilinder container for Tazos - Themed after the Angry Birds. I used to use it as a piggie bank, but eventually the amount of coins I got was big enough I had to use something else, right now itās just a display piece, it doesnāt fit with anything, but whatever. This one is from 2013 it seems, not too old but still.
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A Plants vs Zombies keychain! - Like the cars, this oneās stored away in a box with a bunch of other keychains both old and new. I remember this one because I got it by buying a snack at the small shop in my neighborhood. There were 8 of them but Iām happy I just got the Peashooter one. I miss when snacks came with toys and extra goodies inside. This oneās from 2013 as well!
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A travel sized Bop-It! - I got this one in a rare trip to the United States when I was 13 or 14. I havenāt replaced the batteries but it was actually really fun, and I like that it actually fits in a pocket, unlike the regulat Bop It! and similar games.
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Artwork from middle school - I still have some drawings I did for art class in middle school, itās kind of fun to look back at them and remember those days. I have a portfolio with all of them and some other old school works.
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My puzzle cubes collection - I have been collecting cubes since 2016, so itās a relatively recent endeavor, and a pretty great hobby that I was very invested in for a while, I still dabble with them to this day!
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A Beetle toy car - One of miniature model cars made of metal that can open the trunk and such. This Beetle was with me since the early 2000s, my parents gifted it to my uncle who took care of it for years, and gave it back to me early this year. I totally forgot about it at the time, if Iām honest, but itās not going away now.
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Many notebooks - I still have my notebooks from high school and even middle school for some reason. I really havenāt read those in a while, itās just me being paranoid about it. I want to keep them somehow, but it doesnāt actually make much sense if Iām honest. I should probably scrap them at lastā¦
I no longer haveā¦
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Any of my Tazos - Tazos are a core memory of every Mexicanās school kid from the 2000s and 2010s (that I know of), every kid knew your popularity was defined by the amount of tazos youāve won from other kids. I wasnāt very good at it, and I didnāt have money to buy Sabritas and snacks with Tazos inside, so I often relied on friends to give me one and get a chance to play against others and win that way!
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A few of my first cubes - I remember getting a 4x4 and a Pyraminx during Christmas back in the day, it was a fantastic time, and yet, I feel bad about selling them a few years later when I wanted newer models, it was a gift from my parents after all, so I feel icky about it even todayāI sold them to a friend, at least, maybe I could ask if he still has themā¦
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My favorite childhood plushie - The Bear from Bear in the Big Blue House. I already mentioned this one in a previous post about random facts about me, but yeah, it happens.
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The only Hot Wheels track Iāve had - The Casa Cristo 5000 Maltese Ice Caves from the Speed Racer movie. This was amazing and super fun to look at the cars going and sliding around in the ice section. Sadly it relied on those big expensive batteries and I didnāt get much use out of it later on. I kept The Racer X car that came with it though!
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The only nerf gun Iāve had - I always wanted a Nerf gun, but other than one of those cheap single dart ones I got at some rich kid friendās party (actually, I donāt remember where I got it) the only one I ever had was a Nerf Vigilon, from the Vortex line-upāwhich used discs instead of darts. The only reason I could afford it was because the store actually mislabeled it and it was less than 5 USD at the time! I clearly remember looking up at my dad and fighting for it, I was so happy!
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My Max Steel action figures - Max Steel was the best, I loved the movies and I have two of them on DVD, but the people decided to reboot the series and make it a bit of a Ben 10 clone, cheaped out on the toy materials and eventually stopped selling them. I remember I got the exact same model twice in a birthday from two different people, I should have kept one packaged! But I was a kid so, I gifted one to a friend and kept with the other, until I gave it away too years down the line..
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Random toys - A Spider-man action figure that had so many movement options and flexibility, Iām actually angry I lost it. A Transformer, a Beyblade, basically any toy above 15 dollars was a huge rarity for me, and for some reason I lost or got rid of most of them.
To keep or not to keep?
I think I start to see how some of the things I got no longer serve any purpose for me, and I just keep them for the sake of it. I can also notice some things that bring me joy just by the fact that I know they are still with me after so much time.
Right now, I can still take out my Hot Wheels cars and play with them without feeling cringe about it. I still play handheld videogames wherever I have the chance to. But maybe I can get rid of old keychains, or a plushie here and there.
Some people may say that even if something brings me joy, itās ok to get rid of it once it becomes unpractical, or when I could make space for newer things that will bring me new memories. But well, maybe Iām not ready yet, and thatās okay as well.
I should probably make one of those photo albums of things important to me, and just keep those memories and get rid of the thing taking up space, but, I donāt know, I am still a kid inside, still attached to some of those physical relics of my early years.
By the way, I wrote something similar about random gifts I remember, in case you want more. What are some of the things you still keep despite the years? Iād love to know!
