When I moved to college, I cleaned off a bulletin board to find a Gatorade^® wrapper from an eighth-grade basketball game where, according to the back of the wrapper written in black sharpie, we lost 48-12. Why keep that? It must have been a good story, because it certainly was not a good game.

I married a man who is also a keeper, but he doesn’t like stories, he prefers numbers. Boring! Where I generalize, he is precise. When I estimate, he is exact. This keeps our marriage exciting.

The collecting got a bit out of hand at the end of the school year, when the contents of a preschool and a second grade classroom were completely relocated to our home. In an effort to declutter the farmhouse, I was starting in the greatest trouble spot known to mankind: the mudroom. 

As I began to untangle the artifacts, remnants of the cattle barn continued to show up.

I found ear tags from a heifer that served us well. A tail switch from a dam whose progeny remains on the back 40. A nose ring from a bull I never actually cared for. I found a cup of embryo straw tops that could tell stories of progress and hope, and used semen straws I’m terrified the children’s friends will think are drinking straws. It was like a much less-organized, less-dusted, mini Hall of Fame.

On clipboards I found weaning weights from 2013 and carcass weights from steers we processed before our kids were born — and I don’t even remember life before kids. There were coffee cans full of needles, cracked buckets that won’t hold water, rubber boots that should not live to see another day and gloves with no index finger. These could be handy if you need to answer the phone in a blizzard, I guess. A stack of barn towels used for calving showed more shreds than a government document. 

So why do we keep these things — these artifacts of the good days and the difficult ones; the hot, bright summer days; and dark, long nights in the calving barn?

For the stories we’ll tell our kids. The days we’ll still talk about when they’re bigger and asking questions about why and how we did the things we did.

Maybe we’ll point to a nose ring and connect it to the registration number on a show heifer under the barn. Maybe the ear tags will teach a lesson on selection and decision-making. The boots are an example of … well, probably just being too cheap to buy another pair just yet. 

After a long day of working to declutter, I decided to physically count all the “why are we keeping this?” items I’d found within the mud room I was certain we could part with, so the numbers guy could better understand the need to let go. 

By dusk we had tossed five mismatched gloves and a solar calculator that no longer worked, even on a 90-degree day. 

I don’t think he understood the point of my story. 

Editor’s note: Lindsay Sankey is a freelance writer from Economy, Ind.