Baby keepsake box ideas: what to keep and how to pack it
A baby keepsake box holds a small, chosen set of things from the first days: the hospital bracelet, one first outfit, a lock of hair, a handful of photos, your birth announcement and a letter to your child. Keep only a few, and pack each material the way the Library of Congress and the Canadian Conservation Institute advise.
What goes in a baby keepsake box?
The French card shop Planet Cards gives the objects it calls symbolic their own section in its guide to birth keepsakes, and the photo printer ifolor adds a few more in the keepsake box ideas on its Swiss site. Between them:
| Keepsake | What the guides say about it |
|---|---|
| Hospital bracelet | Planet Cards: it usually carries the details of the maternity stay, and over the years it can become one of the most moving things in the box |
| Birth announcement | Planet Cards: keep the copy sent to the family, or keep one in an album |
| First outfit | Planet Cards: a first pyjama, hat or socks; pick one outfit that stands for the period and add a small label with the date or a story |
| Lock of hair | Planet Cards: in small dated envelopes inside the box, where some parents later add a milk tooth |
| Photos | Planet Cards: a few strong pictures, with dates or short stories |
| Cuddly toy, dummy, first socks | ifolor names these beside the hospital bracelet as objects with sentimental value |
| A photo a month | ifolor: one photo for each month of the first year, printed small, with room to note the dates |
Two of Planet Cards' ideas are things you write. One is a letter to your baby on the day of the birth, about what you felt and what you wish for their future, put in the box to be found much later. The other is a few words for the baby from grandparents, brothers and sisters or close friends, gathered in a notebook.
Your own birth card belongs in the box as well. What to do with the cards you received is in our guide to keeping birth announcement cards.
How much should you keep?
A handful. Planet Cards puts it plainly: the point is not to keep everything, and a few carefully chosen items are enough to tell the story of the baby's first days.
It applies that twice. Instead of the whole wardrobe of the first months, it says, pick one outfit that really stands for that period. And to avoid ending up with hundreds of pictures that are hard to sort, pick a few strong ones and add dates or short stories. Planet Cards gives the notes a reason too: the label on the outfit is there to remind you of the circumstances in which it was worn.
How do you organise a baby memory box?
Planet Cards suggests sorting the box by period, with separate pouches or envelopes so it stays easy to look through, for example one for each of these:
- the birth and the maternity stay
- the first month
- the first photos
- the first presents
- the first year
- the first birthdays
That list runs well past the first weeks, and the guide plans the box for it: big enough for the memories still to come, solid enough to be kept for several years, in wood, rigid card or a textile, with the baby's name, birth date or a short message on it. ifolor suggests the finished box as a present for your child's 18th birthday, or as something to enjoy together during childhood.
A birth book completes the box, in Planet Cards' view. You can write down the date of birth, the weight and the length, and also the first nights, the first outings and how the family reacted. A few sincere sentences, it says, can be worth much more than a notebook filled in a hurry.
How do you store paper, photos and baby clothes so they last?
Each material has its own rules. The Library of Congress publishes the ones it has used for its own paper and photograph collections, and the Canadian Conservation Institute's textile lab the one for fabric. For the room, both Library of Congress pages below, the one for paper and the one for photographs, say to avoid attics and basements.
Paper: the cards, the letter and the birth book. The Library of Congress's care advice for works on paper asks for acid- and lignin-free folders and boxes, minimal exposure to light, and no paper clips, rubber bands, self-adhesive tape or glue. Any mark you make on the paper itself should be in pencil, not ink.
Photos: the Library's page on photographs counts a storage material as photo-safe only when it passes ISO 18902, including the Photographic Activity Test (PAT), which suppliers often note. It rules out self-adhesive tape, sticky notes and glue on photographs, and albums with "magnetic" or sticky self-adhesive pages. The page would rather you date the sleeve or folder than the photo; if you have to mark the print itself, write on the back, near the edge, with a soft graphite pencil.
Clothes: the Canadian Conservation Institute's note on flat storage for textiles asks for a clean textile, because soil invites infestation. Then come as few folds as possible, folds padded with unbuffered acid-free tissue, and a box with a lid. Pins and staples come out: they put stress on the fabric and are almost certain to rust. So lay the outfit's label beside it in the box, with nothing pinned through the fabric.
Keep a few things, give each one a date or a story, and pack each material the way its preservation guide asks.
Where does a birth poster fit in?
A birth poster goes on the wall above the box. Planet Cards' third idea is a frame with the birth details, name, date, time, weight and length, that decorates the baby's room and keeps a record of the day.
That is the job of our birth posters. In our poster editor the name and the birth date are required, and you can add the time of birth, the weight and the length. Which details to print and which style to choose is in our birth poster ideas, and if you are putting a box or a poster together for someone else's baby, our personalised birth gift ideas cover what to ask the parents first.
To put the day's details on the wall beside the box, start a birth poster in the editor.