What are some random keepsakes you hold onto?

As a car/mechanically minded/amateur blacksmith/work-with-my-hands kinda guy I won't mention things like what my wife refers to as my random hardware that I keep for whatever use it may have in the future. Spare nuts, bolts, brackets, etc. from whatever project or product I was working on or took apart. As those are more usable things that'll come in handy at some point.

In my fireproof safe I have every little note my wife has hid/left for me over the years, from notes in my lunch back when I went to an office to the notes hidden around the house that we leave for the other to find.

I hold on to every fortune I get out of fortune cookies. Even though it's a bunch of fucking nonsense, I like to think it brings me luck.

I still have casings from the first gun and semi-automatic rifle I ever fired when I was 10. I always thought they were cool.

Ive been able to declutter a lot over the past couple years but still have holdouts. the things i tend to have a harder time parting with are either:

1. Crafty/fix up stuff that 'may have some use!', or
2. Things Im worried other people will feel bad about me having gotten rid of.

Of group 2, the most amusing thing was a box containing some little figurines from a family member. Id had them since childhood. I never took them out, but I also felt bad getting rid of them.

After years, I opened the box and all but 1 had broken. It was such a relief, and the last one I finally put out on display.

I used to have a 2009 Rebel 250. It was taken from me when I was rear ended at a stoplight and they totaled it out over a broken taillight, some scuffed up paint, and some other minor damage.

The gas cap was part of that other minor damage, and I happened to pick it up off the road, so I kept it. It's a nice little reminder of my bike.

Nice to know it can be called "minor" hoarding! I've got a drawer full of sentimental stuff, best represented by an empty jar that held Pond's Cold Cream which was my mother's makeup remover / moisturizer. Mum died thirty years ago, but the jar held the smell of her until quite recently. Now I'm crying.

On my desk is an old electrical insulator that looks like this one. A number of years ago the line at the side of the house had to be repaired and the technician replaced the insulator with whatever they use now. I noticed he'd thrown the old one in our garbage bin and I said hell no, that's coming with me. After decades of service it deserves to be admired. It's delightfully smooth and glossy and a very appealing rich brown colour, and I like having a little piece of this house's history to keep no matter where I end up.

I have a bunch of little things.

There's a tiny, ceramic mug I got from a coin machine when I was maybe four or five years old. There's nothing special about it, it just stayed with me and at some point I decided welp, guess you're along till I'm done, so I've kept it.

I kept a ring I was given by a woman I nearly married. It's not an engagement ring/was never meant as one, it was just a random gift and hardly anyone has given me jewelry before, so I kept it.

A coworker gave me a tiny statue of a Mayan temple, that he got in Guatemala. I don't really know why he gave me that, but it looks nice, so I've kept it on my desk.

A shareware copy of Quake. It was my dad's, and somehow it just wound up within my stuff, so I kept it and keep it on my desk (it's the nice little foldable booklet, with info about the game, like honestly the nicest shareware package I've ever seen).

A tiny, pink cowboy hat. Someone put it on my dog, but I don't know who - my dog just ran up to me one day at the dog park with a tiny, pink hat on her head.

My bedside table drawer is a time capsule from my childhood. There's stuff there like school ID from elementary school, medals from middle school judo tournaments or ribbons with goodbye messages from high school classmates (who I haven't seen ever since, a very long time ago). It's only a drawer, it's not like this stuff is taking up much space, and it's interesting to hold on to.

I think some of my writing equipment, such as my ruler or scissors, date all the way back to school days too (it still works, so why replace it?)

Anyone else do this? What are some things you are forever attached to?

Only some stereotypical relationship stuff for me. I'm really sentimental over that stuff. Birthday cards, even ribbons from the presents, Post-Its, ticket stubs. For everything else, I've fortunately been able to remain more discerning.

Can't seem to let go of small items like pencil stubs and erasers from childhood, and other small seemingly insignificant things.

If you need to get rid of some of that, I read that taking a picture of the thing first can help make it easier to dispose of. I tried it out and, yeah, it kind of did help. But those specific items you listed OP—they sound small enough and they're from childhood—I'd probably hold onto them too.

I have a tiny notebook I kept from my old job, they were a lovely bunch, I loved the place to bits, and it was the very last present they gave me before I left.

For me the largest sentimental is probably Tshirts. Most I still wear until they start getting holes.

Right now I'm wearing the Tshirt from the first concert I attended more than 20 years ago: Catch 22. This one probably has to be retired to the rest of my sentimental tshirts bin from that era, probably destined to be a quilt someday.

Some other notable ones:

• The shirt I wore to the birth of my firstborn: "Let me stop everything and help you with your problem."
• The three that I was wearing most when I met my wife (one of which is "Bow before me, for I am root", the other "There are 10 types of people: Those who understand binary, and those who don't"). I had a thing for Thinkgeek in those days.

Teeth from children who are in no way related to me. I used to work at a residential treatment center for kids and we'd do the whole tooth fairy thing. Somehow I ended up with a bunch of little plastic treasure chests with baby teeth in them. I also have a card and some little arts and crafts things the kids gave me, so at least it's not just a box full of teeth.

For the last 20 years or so I've had this random award coin from the mayor of Ottawa that some student from my public school dropped. The coin is inscribed "The mayor's environmental award for students". Somewhat ironic that I found it lying in the dirt.

Through necessity and my own personality, I don't own too much stuff compared to other folks, but I do have some I keep for nostalgic or sentimental reasons: A couple old CD jewel cases for computer games I really liked. A few pop science books my dad was reading before he past away with his bookmark still in them.

Birthday cards from parents and grandparents. Neither are with me anymore, but I'll keep them forever. Same as some travel memorabilia with friends, wife, family - tickets to show x, map of city y, all sorted im some boxes with their names on them.

Other than the small mountain of stuff back at my mom's, I've got this metal charm of Goku from Dragon Ball Z on my keyring that I bought around 15 years ago now. DBZ has been a real life-long love of mine, so initially I kept it as a momento of that. Now that this little Goku has been with me through so much of my life, its meaning to me has only deepened.

I just pulled a mother of pearl oyster shell out of my bulging storage. I used to stare at that thing as a kid, so I kept it. This season, I've collected a pinecone I half dismantled, a half not-quite-walnut shell, and an evergreen bush's strange shaped cone in progress.i can't quite call it a cone though? It's so hard to describe, so I kept it to sketch it.

The business card of my favorite professor. I had done something well in front of class, and he wrote a note about extra credit points and told me to cash it in at the end of the semester. I ended up keeping it instead :)

He was an amazing professor. He had a reputation as a hard ass, but all of those trials thrown at us were genuinely for our benefit, and he sincerely wanted to see us succeed.

I have a copy of The Gingerbread Man book that I got for having the neatest printing in Grade 1 from my teacher, Mrs. Lane. That was 56 years ago!
She must have had an influence as I went on to excel in graphic arts and became a magazine publisher for a few years.

I have been getting better about parting with old semi-sentimental items, but I still have some things from my childhood (old console games, a few comic books, things like that) or items from my father since he passed away. I also kept any concert stuff that I got autographed aka overpriced tshirts I'll never wear.

I try not too keep too much, but I definitely have various tchotchke's around my office. I fancy myself as not keeping a whole lot and not being sentimental, but I guess I do have quite a bit now that I think about it due to this thread. I have a shelf of old game CD's that will never be used again, random tchotchke's on a shelf and on my window sill from various points in my life that mean things to me. Generally you could condense most of the things that I keep down to a single, small bookshelf.

I have a rock of Hematite I wore around my neck through the end of elementary to the end of high school. I keep it around for sentimental reasons, and to this day don't even know why I wore it. I just liked it. To this date polished hematite is my favorite rock.

My dads work boots, I keep them by the door with all the other shoes. After he died it just helped make things feel more normal to have his stuff right where he left it. I have moved twice since then but I still keep them by the door. I also have a stuffed animal that my parents gave me the day I was born, I plan on being buried with it.