A Wave of Nostalgia: Puzzles & Games from My Childhood

This weekend I fell down a bit of a nostalgia rabbit hole. I was doing some decluttering and re-organising of my stuff, playing lots of old mixtapes while I worked and getting frequently distracted by reading old letters, etc.

Meanwhile, my mum was clearing a few more boxes out of the attic - retrieving more boxes of things from our childhood that were packed up many moons ago. Some of this treasure will be (finally) given to charity shops, but much of it is destined for my new neice and any siblings and cousins she aquires over the coming years :)

I remembered a lot of the things that emerged from these boxes, but there were a few that hit me with such a strong wave of memories that it was slightly overwhelming (in a good way!). I thought you guys might enjoy a peek at some of the games I loved in my 80s childhood - maybe you had some of these too?

Picture Pairs & Animal Friends Dominos: I must have been really young when we first started playing picture pairs but those pictures are imprinted on my brain. The watering can was always my favourite.

Snakes and Ladders - a classic!

 

Foxwood Tales and Brambly Hedge jigsaw puzzles: I loved these books (especially the Brambly Hedge series) and spent many happy hours looking at the pictures, and (when I was a bit older) trying to draw some of the charming little things in them.

Teddy Bears Picnic: I had 100% forgotten that this game was a thing that existed and I have no clue what the rules might have been, but when it came out of the box from the attic: POW! So familiar!

 

Something else I'd totally forgotten about: Victoria Plum's Adventures. I loved this book and all the cute pictures, especially as my BFF at the time was called Victoria:

Huff-Puff: My mum tried to get rid of this game when we were deciding what to keep and what to charity shop. "It looks really boring!" she said. "What's fun about building these fiddly little card houses?" But we were having none of it. Building little card houses before the wolf can blow them down = very fun indeed!

Another fave puzzle: I absolutely adored this picture and remember doing lots of paintings with mountains in them just like those.

There was also a box of older-kids games. We spent sooooo many hours playing Guess Who over the years, including many games auf Deutsch with visiting German friends. Once you've learnt the German for things like "does he have a moustache" and "do they have brown hair?" you can have hours of fun...

Finally, rediscovering this card game hit me so hard in the feels I can't even. Old Macdonald Counting Snap! So. Much. Cuteness.

Decluttering and Treasure-Hunting

I am sloooooowly recovering from a horrid bug which has left me feeling quite wobbly and rather foggy-brained... and without a lot of energy for working or making (or blogging). 

It is very frustrating not being able to charge through my To Do list like normal. In the meantime, to make myself useful I have been doing lots of time-consuming-but-not-terribly-complicated tasks like properly filing stacks of paperwork and tidying up boxes of supplies in my studio. My workspace is going to be wonderfully well organised by the time I get back to my regular working schedule!

 
I've also slowly been doing some more decluttering. After struggling to finish my Less 365 Project last year I've been amazed by the amount of stuff I've managed to clear out this spring (or, at least, add to the pile in the corner of my room that'll be getting charity-shopped once I've recovered from this bug!).

I've been keeping a list (because I am a giant nerd and I love a nice list) and have decluttered 73 things so far - some big (cushions, double-bed sized blankets, stacks of magazines, etc) and some small (brooches, toys from Christmas crackers, fridge magnets, etc). As always, it feels pretty fantastic to realise "I don't need/want/love this anymore!" and to be finding new homes for all these unwanted things.

As well as sorting through my own stuff, I've been helping my mum sort through boxes of old books, toys and trinkets tucked away in the attic years ago. These boxes are like timecapsules and going through them has totally transported me back to my childhood.

I couldn't resist taking some photos of these She-Ra: Princess of Power books - I read them sooooo many times! My sisters and I were big fans of She-Ra (and Jem & the Holograms, of course).

It's been fun revisiting these old favourites, but also weird re-discovering things I loved as a kid but had totally forgotten about until this week. Like these guys:

 

Keypers! Remember them? They came with a key and had a "secret" compartment to keep your treasures safe. Such fun.

My sisters and I each had one of these - mine was the snail. Here are the "treasures" I had hidden inside when it got packed away many years ago...

I'm rather looking forward to sorting through the rest of the boxes in the attic - I wonder what other long-forgotten treasures we'll find?

80s Child: My Eraser Collection!

My Less 365 project might be finished, but I'm still working on decluttering my space - slowly sifting the beloved, much-used "wheat" of my possessions from the no-longer-loved, no-longer-needed "chaff".

While working on my Less 365 project, I "decluttered" my childhood badge collection: taking a photo of the whole collection as a memento, then keeping just a few favourites with special sentimental meaning. I had totally intended to do this for some of my other childhood collections but not got round to it (oops). 

So, when I found myself at a loose end the other day what did I do? Took photos of my novelty eraser collection, of course!

I haven't counted them, but there are quite a few erasers in the collection!

I think most of them date from the late 80s to the early 90s, basically while I was in primary school and spending my pocket money on cute nonsense like this. I vividly remember buying some of these erasers while on a summer holiday at Butlins, some were obviously bought on school trips and family outings to museums and theme parks (several of which I'd totally forgotten I'd ever visited) and others were gifts from my mother, tucked into the pockets of our Advent Trees.

I especially love the comb and the windmill (it has plastic blades that spin!)...

 

... the smiley-face-in-a-box that I won playing croquet at a friend's birthday party and the treble clef I got when I was taking piano lessons...

 

... the retro telephone and those cute kittens...

 

... the interlocked rabbit and baby rabbit...

 

... and the rainbow clothes peg. So much cuteness!

I'm going to keep just a few of these that tug at my heartstrings - any suggestions for what I should do with the rest? I'd hate for them to just get thrown away, but I suspect that's exactly what might happen if I donated them to a charity shop.

UPDATE: the erasers have found a new home with a collector, hurrah! I donated the money raised to a children's charity - it seemed appropriate given that these gave me so much happiness in my own childhood :)

P.S. for more 80s kid nostalgia, here's a blog post about my sticker album!

80s Child

Earlier this month Etsy published a cute article about sticker collections, and it inspired me to dig out my old sticker book and have a nostalgic flick through it...


Some pages are now almost empty (thanks to being plundered over the years to decorate letters, birthday cards and other things) but it's still got plenty of treasures!